Live Free or Drown?

This is very cool.

Pickup Artist

SI discovers the libertarian social theory behind Obama’s affection for pickup basketball:
Organized basketball, particularly in high school, is an exercise in submission to social control. Pickup ball, by contrast, involves collective governance and constant conflict resolution. It is, to borrow Sarah Palin’s phrase, community organizing in which everyone has “actual responsibilities.” For all its associations [...]

Mr. Smith Goes To Springfield

I liked this post from Will Wilkinson, which hearkens back to a point I tried to make in the midst of the excellent Cato Unbound discussion on libertarianism and corporatism:
But if government just doesn’t work, limited government just doesn’t work either. So either go ahead and come out as an anarchist or swallow your iconoclastic [...]

Defenders of the Status Quo

Have you read Steven Horowitz’s excellent response essay at Cato Unbound? Here’s an interesting nugget:
Libertarians like me who make arguments of the second sort can easily be accused of “vulgar libertarianism.” There might be cases where that claim is valid, but I don’t think the accusation is fair when the analyst tries her best to [...]

Social Justice Is Not a Family Value

Scott Payne takes a look at possible points of convergence between conservatives and liberals on social justice issues. I’m sympathetic to a lot of what he has to say, but it’s worth remembering that while conservatives’ preferred policy outcomes may align with liberal concerns in certain areas, their respective justifications for, say, protecting the environment [...]

Honorable Intentions

Having witnessed several noble debacles, I’ve come to believe that principled ideologues have some obligation to outline how their preferred policy choices would function in a real-world setting. It would have been nice, for example, to have had a robust national debate on the merits of occupying Iraq before we started lobbing smart bombs through [...]

Barring the Way

JL Wall (possible rap pseudonym alert!) flags this highly-entertaining New Yorker profile of Bob Barr. I can’t say I’ve followed Barr’s campaign with anything approaching real interest or enthusiasm, but I will say this: I’ve never understood the argument that his candidacy is the work of a cynical opportunist. Toiling away on the campaign trail [...]

Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty

Slate editor Jack Schafer endorses Bob Barr for president:
Which brings me back to Barr and the absentee ballot I cast for him this morning (Oct. 23). He gets my vote not because he’d be a good president. He wouldn’t. He gets my vote not because he has a chance of becoming a president. He doesn’t. [...]

Speaking of Populists . . .

Here’s an interesting interview with Ron Paul from Nathancontramundi. I’ve soured on the man since his quasi-racist tendencies were exposed by The New Republic, but I can’t help but admire his stubborn adherence to principle.

Say What?

TNR’s Eve Fairbanks:
That shows what a political vote this was, but it also highlights an increasingly dominant House dynamic: the rise of the conservatives, what a friend calls the proponents of “free trade, libertarianism, true free markets, freedom from government intervention in a wide range of sectors, true, rock-ribbed, hard core conservatism,” led by younger [...]

Savage Reservations

Alan Jacobs has a smart response to Joe Carter’s previous post on libertarianism’s deficiencies:
All that to say that you can have a very low opinion of human nature and still be a libertarian; you just have to believe that our inevitable corruption has less dire consequences when personal freedom is maximized than when the rule [...]

Libertarianism, reconsidered

Joe Carter posts a lengthy critique of libertarianism. Do read the whole thing, but I think this quote sums up his argument:
The primary flaw in libertarianism is that it is rooted in an ethic of utilitarianism rather than virtue ethics. Without a person developing the corresponding moral character necessary for self-restraint, his liberty is bound [...]