Monday, January 31, 2022

From Radical Skepticism to Radical Certainty

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As liberal author Helen Pluckrose  makes clear  the illiberal postmodernist left's shift from radical skepticism to radical certainty (i...
Sunday, January 30, 2022

Free Speech -- What Is it Good for? Absolutely Nothing?

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It is worth emphasizing that Enlightenment liberals have placed at the very top of their list of desiderata an institution explicitly intend...
Saturday, January 29, 2022

Boomerang Argument

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Any argument against a totally free society that depends on the dark side of human nature inevitably circles around to hit the one making th...
Friday, January 28, 2022

TGIF: Anti-Woke Isn't Necessarily Pro-Liberty

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I had a reminder this week that those who oppose fashionable postmodernist-style attacks on reason and objectivity, such as "critical...
Tuesday, January 25, 2022

There Are No Trans Gender or Nonbinary People in Hospitals

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Of course I don't mean that there are no people who call themselves trans or nonbinary in hospitals. I am referring to the fact that th...
7 comments:
Sunday, January 23, 2022

Do as I Say, Not as I Do

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The activists who demand that we all ratify their self-proclaimed identities seem unwilling to play by the same rule. They hurl the charge o...
Saturday, January 22, 2022

Language, Necessity, and Convenience

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If we ever got to the point where the words man  and woman  (etc.) commonly denoted only one's subjective "gender identity" r...
Friday, January 21, 2022

TGIF: Easy Cases May Make Bad Rules

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Hard cases make bad law, an adage apparently coined before 1837 tells us. In  other words , "an extreme case is a poor basis for a gene...
Tuesday, January 18, 2022

What Is Mutual Altruism?

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According to Richard Dawkins in  The Selfish Gene , theft is "selfish," while trade is "mutually altruistic." If genes a...
Monday, January 17, 2022

I Admit It

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I'm growing increasingly intolerant of intolerance.
Friday, January 14, 2022

TGIF: Utopianism May Be Hazardous to Your Health

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Beware those who claim to have a detailed blueprint for the ideal society. If such a person thinks you stand in the way, you may get run ove...
Friday, January 07, 2022

TGIF: National or Enlightenment Liberal Identity?

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I find much to admire about Ayaan Hirsi Ali , the Somali-born Dutch-American scholar, author, and one-time politician who has drawn internat...
Friday, December 31, 2021

TGIF: Pursue Your Happiness and Forget the Rest

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How about we do something novel in the new year? Let's stop worrying about the stuff most politicians, pundits, and activists want us to...
5 comments:
Thursday, December 30, 2021

Feelings and Explanations

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We frequently conflate feelings with explanations of feelings. It's important that we not do that.  From the fact that people are infal...
3 comments:
Friday, December 17, 2021

TGIF: Double-Rigging of the Auto Market

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U.S. government interference with our lives often resembles a Russian matryoshka doll: regulation is nested in more regulation. Take the pro...
1 comment:
Friday, December 10, 2021

TGIF: Joe Biden, Let's Not Go to War with Russia

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Here's a good idea: let's not go to war against Russia. Let's not even rattle a saber at Russia (or China, for that matter) beca...
Friday, December 03, 2021

TGIF: Safety in Freedom

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With the emergence of the Omicron COVID-19 variant, renewed restrictions on liberty or calls for their reinstatement have broken out around ...
Friday, November 26, 2021

TGIF: Racial Polarization Is Poison

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Be they "left" or "right," those who agitate for racial polarization seem to have no sense of the harm they could do to ...
Tuesday, November 23, 2021

"Coming to Palestine" Discussed on Podcast

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I discussed my Libertarian Institute book Coming to Palestine   on the podcast The Enragés (a project under the auspices of the Center for ...
Friday, November 19, 2021

TGIF: Rigged Political Language

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It's an old trick: gain advantage over others by hiding one's meaning behind euphemisms and other forms of linguistic camouflage and...
1 comment: