Category: Social and Political Philosophy
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Mayor Bloomberg on the Purpose of Government
(CBS News) New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg shrugged off criticism of his controversial public health initiatives, saying that "if government's purpose isn't to improve the health and longevity of its citizens, I don't know what its purpose is." [emphasis added.] Bloomberg most recently put forth a plan to ban the sale of sugary drinks…
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Propinquity and Social Distance
Familiarity and social proximity have their positive aspects, but they also breed contempt. No man a hero to his valet. Nemo propheta acceptus est in patria sua: No prophet is accepted in his own country. (Luke 4:24) Few bloggers are read by their relatives. Social distance, too, has positive and negative sides. One negative is that people…
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Social Justice or Subsidiarity?
Just over the transom from James Anderson: I appreciated your recent posts on "social justice." I agree that the phrase is a mendacious rhetorical device and that conservatives should refuse to use it. But what should we use instead? In one post you asked what's wrong with "plain old 'justice.'" One problem is that the…
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Federalism
My plea for federalism is contained in Can Federalism Save Us? And so I am pleased to point my readers to Jonah Goldeberg's The Federalist Solution. Mitt Romney mentioned federalism in a recent speech but he didn't pause to explain what it means. That was a mistake. Joe Sixpack has no idea what federalism is. He…
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What is Social Justice?
How could any decent person be opposed to social justice? Don't we all want to live in a just society? But as Barry Loberfeld points out, The signature of modern leftist rhetoric is the deployment of terminology that simply cannot fail to command assent. As [George] Orwell himself recognized, even slavery could be sold if…
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Ron Paul and Libertarian Extremism
Ron Paul made a strong showing in Iowa last night despite his coming in third behind Santorum (second) and Romney (first). But there is no way that Paul will receive the Republican nomination. His irresponsible foreign policy positions alone disqualify him. You may disagree with that, but most agree with me, and that includes the…
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Secular Theocracy
Part I of an article by David J. Theroux.
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In Defense of Distributism
Here. "Contrary to what our critics suggest, Distributism does not denote government redistribution of wealth, which is socialism, but rather the natural distribution of wealth that arises when the means of production are distributed as widely as possible in society." I am afraid I must quibble with the lax definition of socialism just given. Robert…
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Vote ‘No’ on Mandatory Voting
The following, from the Powerblogs site, was written in August of 2006 and is here re-published in redacted form. In a New York Times opinion piece, Norman Ornstein advocates mandatory voting: In the Australian system, registered voters who do not show up at the polls either have to provide a reason for not voting or pay a …
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9/11 Ten Years After: Liberty and Security
Liberty and security stand in a dialectical relation to each other in that (i) each requires the other to be what it is, and yet (ii) each is opposed to the other. Let me explain. Ad (i). LIberty is something worth having. But a liberty worth having is a liberty capable of being exercised fruitfully…
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On Private and Public Morality
Many liberals have the bad habit of confusing private and public morality. They think that moral injunctions that make sense in private ought to be carried over into the public sphere. Such liberals are dangerously confused. There are those who, for example, take the Biblical injunction to "welcome the stranger" as a reason to turn a…
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Voluntary Balkanization: Good or Bad?
Another fit topic of rumination on this Independence Day 2011 is the question of voluntary segregation or balkanization. Herewith, a few very preliminary remarks. I have been inclining toward the view that voluntary segregation, in conjunction with a return to federalism, might be a way to ease tensions and prevent conflict in a country increasingly…
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Value-Free Government?
Libertarians sometimes speak as if government could and ought to be value-free. But value-free government is as impossible as value-free education. Education cannot be value-free for the simple reason that all education, assuming it is not confused with indoctrination, presupposes that knowledge is a value and ignorance a disvalue. If knowledge is a value then…
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One Man, One Vote: A Dubious Principle
It is a highly dubious principle if you think about it. But is there a better one? Suppose you have two people, A and B. A is intelligent, well-informed, and serious. He does his level best to form correct opinions about the issues of the day. He is an independent thinker, and his thinking is…
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Robert Paul Wolff on Anarchism and Marxism
I see that R. P. Wolff has a blog, The Philosopher's Stone. His post Anarchism and Marxism caught my eye. In it he addresses the question of the logical consistency of his anarchism and his Marxism. The answer of course depends on how Wolff employs these terms. First of all, when I call myself an anarchist,…