A Pew report found that 1 in every 100 U.S. adults is now behind bars. The breakdown along racial and ethnic lines is even more disturbing. In the 18 and over age demographic for males, Pew found that 1 in 106 white males are behind bars compared to 1 in 36 for Hispanic males, and […]
From The Liberty Papers
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
In what may well be one of the last published articles he wrote, William F. Buckley Jr. recalls the problems that arose when the John Birchers got too close to Barry Goldwater’s Presidential Campaign:
The society had been founded in 1958 by an earnest and capable entrepreneur named Robert Welch, a candy man, who brought together […]
From The Liberty Papers
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
As The Guardian witters on about Teh Great Evil of Tesco’s obeying the country’s tax laws, a useful corrective: it’s not going to save any tax anyway.
The latest flier in US politics is that John McCain cannot be President because he wasn’t born in the United States. Incorrect.
If we moved further into America’s economic embrace, might this happen to us too?
The final squalid results of E-Day: third to last para for the full effect.
An explanation, from a GP, of quite how badly wrong the government got the new GP contract.
So, which do you want? Windmills or whooping cranes?
And finally, everything you might want to know about Leap Day.
From Adam Smith Institute
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
49. "It’s quite right to make racist or homophobic remarks illegal."
It’s certainly not acceptable to make racist or homophobic remarks, or to let people get away with making them in your company. The question is whether it should be against the law, with police involvement, fines and possible prison sentences, or whether we should rely on social pressures. Times have changed, and attitudes with them. An older generation callously and carelessly felt free to abuse and stigmatize others for their racial background or sexual orientation. Now there’s more sensitivity to the hurt this can cause, as well as more tolerance. This is particularly true among most younger people.
Despite these welcome changes in attitude, parliamentarians still feel the need to criminalize such remarks. They use the pretext of "incitement," and call even ill-mannered abuse or poor taste humour a hate crime if it mentions some minority. Thus someone was questioned by police after saying humorously on radio that they disliked Welsh people. A shop was visited by police for displaying antique gollywog dolls in its window. Often the person complaining is not of the minority allegedly being derided or mocked, but someone else who thinks that they might be offended.
The point here is that most of us don’t want to live in a society where abuse of people in some way different is regarded as acceptable, but nor do we want to live in a society which allows self-appointed thought police to seize on thoughtless but harmless remarks and have criminal proceedings taken against those who utter them. Not everything which is social unacceptable has to be illegal.
Tolerance is best where it is felt, rather than where it is enforced. It works best when people are easy-going about each other’s differences and backgrounds, and more concerned with what they are like as individuals than about which groups they can be pigeon-holed into.
From Adam Smith Institute
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
He pointed out that billions of the world’s population live on less than $2 a day, but when people start to earn more than that, say up to $10 a day, their consumption of agricultural products increases – not surprisingly, perhaps. And the fact that increasing numbers of people are at last pulling themselves over that $2 threshold is the main reason why we are experiencing a huge increase in world food demand. Indeed, it’s expected to double in just a few years.
Meanwhile, of course, there is concern about environmental issues. As in Brazil: wider agriculture can help satisfy food demand, but if it involved cutting down rainforest trees, a lot of people get worried. It’s a paradox. Perhaps the clearest manifestation of it, in my view, is the US government subsidy programme which has prompted 20% of US maize production to go into the production of the biofuel ethanol. That (together with some rotten harvests in Australia) has raised food-maize prices, which in turn led to riots in Mexico, a poor country which is highly dependent on the crop for its staple foods.
It gets worse. Farmers use 70% of the world’s fresh water, so if we are to meet the rapid rise in food demand, that resource too will be put under strain.
I’m not sure there are any instant answers to such paradoxes. But I am sure that relying on the market is better than relying on governments. People complain that food, water, oil, gas and so on are all getting more expensive to produce as world demand for them increases. I’d say that’s a problem for us all in the short term, but just fine in the long term. The rise in prices will prompt people to use these scarce resources more carefully, look at new ways of producing them, or move to substitutes where they can. It will bring forward new technologies like GM crops and the next generation of cleaner nuclear power. Wait for government schemes to produce these changes, and you’ll be waiting a long time.
From Adam Smith Institute
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
We are delighted to announce that the first twelve blogs in our ‘Common Errors’ series are now available in Spanish, on a dedicated website run by professional translator and fellow free-marketeer Ramón Mier. Click here to see the ‘Errores Communes’
From Adam Smith Institute
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
Is capital punishment an acceptable legal sanction?…
From Samizdata.net
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
I do not normally like receiving emails selling me products, but I thought I would have to make an exception for this: Dear Antoine, Virgin Galactic is delighted to announce a new destination… space. Climb to 360,000ft. at a cruising speed of almost three times the speed of sound, in unprecedented levels of safety and comfort. See our beautiful planet from 63 miles up and experience the magic of weightlessness. Redeem 200,000 miles to receive…
From Samizdata.net
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
Dr. Murray Sabrin is running for the United States Senate in New Jersey and reportedly has devoted his career to promoting limited government and personal freedom. There will be an online fund raising event today (February 29) and Dr Sabrin hopes to raise $1.5M by getting 15,000 Americans to pledge a minimum of $100 each. If he succeeds, he will be the favorite to win the U.S. Senate seat against Frank Lautenberg. I do not…
From Samizdata.net
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
The Ministry of Defence is to be commended (not often I write that) for the way they have handled Prince Harry going to Afghanistan. Aware that knowledge of his presence would greatly increase the risk to him and those serving with him (killing a Royal Prince would be a propaganda coup for the Taliban), they hid the fact for ten weeks, which is no small feat in this day and age. Their tactic was to…
From Samizdata.net
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
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