Libertarianism
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The perfect one-line description of libertarianism
From this EconLog post
just because some people cannot be trusted with liberty does not mean other people can be trusted with power
Pithy – short, and to the point – the LP should abandon all of their other messaging and go with that. Very, very incomplete, but better than their current offerings.
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The Libertarian candidates
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Setting the bar quite low
Randy Barnett has an interesting article on libertarian opinion and the Iraq war in the Wall Street Journal. It had this little nugget of pessimism disguised as hope
They hope that the early signs of progress in this offensive will continue, so that American and Iraqi forces can achieve the military victory necessary to allow the Iraqi government to assume responsibility for protecting the Iraqi people from terrorists, as well as from religious sectarian violence. They hope this success will enable American soldiers to leave Iraq even before they leave Europe and Korea, and regain the early momentum that led, for example, to Libya’s abandonment of its nuclear weapons program.
WWII ended in 1945, the Cold War in 1991, and Korea has been at truce, if not at peace since 1953. that means we would be in Iraq until 2040 at the earliest?
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Ever more Ron Paul
A good performance by Dr Paul on the Colbert Report – Colbert did raise some of his less popular positions, which Paul endorsed with some gusto. Curiously no one has mentioned that he was the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988.
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Thoughts on Ron Paul on the Daily Show
He came across better than usual for his usual presentation. They talked a little about domestic policy, nothing about drug legalization or gun control, mostly spending. Not bad though.
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Ron Paul on the Daily Show tonight
Republican presidential candidate, former Libertarian Party nominee, current Texas representative, temporary darling of the trendy left and overall interesting guy will be on the Daily Show tonight. We’ll see if they go into his foreign policy stance (popular to the Daily Show audience, so long as it’s kept vague) and away from his views on abortion and national health care.
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More on the Libertarian Party
A very well written post on the LP over at the Volokh Conspiracy, to wit:
Some LP defenders argue that even if the Party doesn’t have any chance of winning, it can at least help educate the public about libertarian ideas. However, there is little if any evidence that the LP has actually had any success in this task over its 35 year history. Those libertarians who have succeeded in spreading libertarian ideas – people like Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, and the Cato Institute – have done so without any LP affiliations, and indeed have tried hard to work with the two major parties. Whether fairly or not, the mainstream media and academic world are not going to pay much attention to ideas emanating from a tiny third party that has no chance of winning any elections; therefore, the LP’s educative potential is unlikely to be much greater than its electoral potential.
If we had a proportional representation electoral system, like many European countries and Israel, a separate libertarian party would make excellent strategic sense. The party (if better run than the dysfunctional LP) could command 10-15% of the vote, thereby winning roughly that percentage of legislative seats, and would be a potential part of a ruling political coalition. A libertarian party might also make sense if one of the major political parties were on the brink of collapses and the libertarian party stood a chance of taking its place (as the Republican Party displaced the Whig Party in the 1850s). However, in the real world, the US is unlikely to move toward proportional representation and neither major political party is likely to collapse anytime soon. Therefore, the cause of libertarianism will be better off without a separate Libertarian Party.
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Interesting poll numbers
Bush hits 33% approval or so says Fox, and the affection isn’t going anywhere else. Why isn’t everyone happier about this? America is essentially having a libertarian perception of it’s government (similar to the mid 90’s actually). I’m thrilled, but the rest of the libertarian blogsphere seems to not notice this at all. It’s odd.
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Quick round up
- Virtual Earth and Local.Live.com are very cool, with very good arial photography.
- I am undecided about Geek Entertainment TV
- Charles seems like a cool program.
- Acronis seems to be a cool backup program.
- A free book about information markets.
- N-Unit ASP seems like a good tool.
- The Russian birth rate is up.
- Libertarian views on the Iraq war, from Reason Magazine.
- A budget photography lighting system.
- A wired article on arial photgraphy.
- An interesting post from David Friedman about immigration and the welfare state.
- European Demography.
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Quick Saturday afternoon round up
- Baltic Crusades – on WikiPedia. Interesting.
- Tips for startup companies
- The torn up credit card application – this is scary – get a shredder now.
- An interesting article about the self-described “The Hell with them Hawks.“
- Interesting post from Marginal Revolution about inherent tensions in libertarianism.
- Borders is refusing to stock a magazine that is showing the Mohammed cartoons. More here and here.