"My last two posts have explained what I take to be Rawls’s philosophical project and the main errors in that project. Now I can state in a relatively straightforward fashion why I think libertarians should take Rawls seriously. I’ve explained why in earlier posts, but I weave them together here." (06/19/13)

"So far, the drumbeat for war maintained by Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham has fallen on deaf ears. According to the polls, 60% of the American people do not want a war in Syria. There is no great media push for war, as there was in Iraq. Establishment figures such as Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, are opposed to military intervention. Most importantly, and to his everlasting credit, the president has no desire to fight. Yet he has failed to come out and say frankly that Syria is a situation we cannot solve, and that to intervene in it would be a colossal blunder. His political timidity is baffling, given that he has no more elections to worry about." (06/16/13)

"All over the country, retail establishments are offering primary care services to cash-paying patients. Because these services arose outside of the third-party payment system, their prices are free market prices. Walk-in clinics, doc-in-the-box clinics, and freestanding emergency care clinics post prices and usually deliver high quality care." (06/19/13)

"Drive south from Morgantown, West Virginia, and you soon come to the little town of Arthurdale. At the outskirts of town, there is a roadside plaque informing those who stop to read it that Arthurdale was 'Established in 1933-34 under the Federal Homestead Act.' We also learn that it was a 'pet project' of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and that the town was created to 'assist the unemployed through self-sufficient farming and handicrafts.'" (06/19/13)

"The pretense of science is not science. If government officials truly wish to be scientifically driven, they would allow each of us adults to choose which drugs we wish to take, regardless of the objective likelihood that someone will die or be seriously injured if he or she chooses to be treated with some drug." (06/18/13)

"Q: Libertarians are skeptical. How realistic is an all-libertarian TV channel without compromising the libertarianism? A: 'As successful as we expect JAGTV to be, we will never presume to be some kind of guardian of libertarian philosophical purity. That's neither our job nor our desire.'" (06/19/13)

"Got that? 224 new regulations which will have an economic impact that will 'exceed $100 million' dollars. Negatively of course. That was the purpose of having regulations rated like that -- to understand the probable negative economic impact. And we have 224 in the hopper, in a very down economy, which will exceed the negative $100 million dollar mark. What are those people thinking? Or are they? Indications are they give it no thought when these new regulations are proffered. They just note the cost and move on. No skin of their rear ends." (06/19/13)

"A much-anticipated carbon tax debate in Washington D.C. last Thursday brought some much needed clarity to assertions that conservatives should or indeed do support a carbon tax. The timing of the debate couldn’t have been better, as Senate leaders announced on that same day the Senate will hold hearings on a carbon tax next month." (06/19/13)

"'What we're seeing taking place in Syria is heartbreaking,' President Obama said during a debate with Mitt Romney last October, 'and that’s why we are going to do everything we can to make sure that we are helping the opposition.' You can't say he didn't warn us -- not only about escalating U.S. involvement in Syria's civil war but also about the lack of a credible argument for it based on anything resembling national defense. Judging from the explanation that Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes gave last week for Obama's decision to start arming the Syrian rebels, the president painted himself into a corner with his own red line." (06/19/13)

"What could be more fun? An articulate and very smart young man our Washington mandarins deride as a 'twenty-something high school dropout' has the US national security establishment, the Washington punditocracy, and the President himself in a panicky lather. Government officials are howling with outrage, and calling for Edward Snowden’s head. The pundits are livid: how dare this 'narcissist' who didn’t go to an Ivy League college presume to sit in judgment of his betters! Whatever their disagreements, politicians and talking heads of the left and the right agree: Snowden is a 'traitor!'" (06/19/13)

"On July 19, 2010, the Washington Post published the first of three large reports by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin on the dimensions of the gigantic US apparatus of 'intelligence' activities being undertaken to combat terrorist acts against the United States, such as the 9/11 attacks. To say that this activity amounts to mobilizing every police officer in the country to stop street fights in Camden only begins to suggest its almost-unbelievable disproportion to the alleged threat." 906/18/13)

"You need not suspect the motives of those responsible for NSA surveillance to detest what they are doing. In fact, we may have more to fear from spies acting out of patriotic zeal than those acting out of power lust or economic interest: Zealots are more likely to eschew restraints that might compromise their righteous cause." (06/18/13)

"The pattern is the same in every industry, from farming, to manufacturing, to every aspect of transportation, to the health insurance scam, to anything else you can name. In one common version, already vested interests go to the State demanding regulation and protection from 'destabilizing' forces which, they claim, threaten the nation's well-being (by which, they mean competitors who threaten their profits). The State enthusiastically complies, the cooperative lawmakers enjoying rewards of many kinds and varieties. Then they'll have to enforce all those nifty regulations and controls. The State will do some of it but, heck, it's complicated and time-consuming, ya know? Besides, some of the State's good friends in 'private' business can make a killing doing some of the enforcing. Give it to them!" (06/18/13)

"This was a big phrase in the 1960s, as young people turned away from the corporate conformity of the 1950s and decided that they wanted more out of life than being an adequately-fed cog in a big machine. Let’s be honest and admit that the modern corporate script involves selling your own wishes and dreams for paychecks. I know that a lot of us have played along with it because of necessity, but this is not a way of life to cling to, it’s a way of life to escape." (06/18/13)

"As the federal government relentlessly attacks the Constitution, the only way that liberty can win in the long run is if people refuse to give in. Here at the TAC, we’re not giving in; we’re ramping up the pressure. We believe that nullification -- any act or set of actions that render a 'law' null and void, or just unenforceable in a particular area -- is the path to victory." (06/18/13)

"The New York Times op-ed page has a piece by retired General Wesley Clark headlined: 'To Get a Truce, Be Ready to Escalate.' The Times summarizes Clark’s wisdom: 'The threat of force might get talks over Syria moving, as it did in Kosovo.' ... It is stunning that anyone [would] showcase Clark as a wise man -- considering the fiasco that he unleashed in the Balkans." (06/19/13)

"Over the past few months the American people have witnessed numerous examples of an administration which has no concept of individual liberty. President Obama has been working, often in the open, to strip a complacent public of their (supposedly guaranteed) constitutional rights. While this pattern of myopic power-lust did not begin with the current regime, the alarming acceleration of these occurrences is new. With these new attacks come new ways to rein in Big Government and halt this thinking that our rights are mutable." (06/18/13)

"The United States government’s War on Terror has been ongoing now since September 11, 2001, and for the last 11 1/2 years 779 of the so-called 'terrorist' prisoners have been held indefinitely without due process of law at the infamous War on Terror prison, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since it opened in January 2002. Now the U.S. military sheepishly admits for the first time that only about 2.5% of those 779 prisoners will ever be tried in a court of law for any alleged crimes. Only 20 of them will be prosecuted." (06/19/13)

"Washington is a place renowned for folly. But insiders and outsiders define 'folly' differently. For denizens of D.C., folly means cutting the federal  budget. In his column, 'Alzheimer Research Cuts Show Folly of Sequestration,'  Bloomberg’s Al Hunt recently opined on folly in the capital: 'With the  sequestration-enforced cuts at the National Institutes of Health,' he argues, 'research to find a cure or better treatment is slowing.'" (06/18/13)

"Maybe Edward Snowden provided a greater service to the world than even libertarians first realized when he disclosed the massive National Security Agency spying crime wave." (06/18/13)

"I have pretty low expectations for Superman movies, so I was both impressed and pleasantly surprised to find myself entertained as well as see an important pro-liberty theme embedded in the movie Man of Steel. Leaving aside problems of excessively long special effects and a few plot holes, the 2013 version of the Superman franchise casts Kal-El, aka Superman, as the last hope for individualism on Krypton and his alter ego Clark Kent the embodiment of individualism’s future on Earth." (06/18/13)

"A justified intervention must be on behalf of those who have a just cause. In Syria, the available evidence shows that neither side has a just cause. The government is your standard Middle Eastern oppressor, while the rebels are dominated by Al Qaeda and similar sinister characters." (06/18/13)

"America’s military industrial complex once chased communists. Now it obsesses over CO2 emissions." (06/128/13)

"Let’s proclaim the Good News: Government money is free.  No, not just to the beneficiaries of government programs. To society as a whole.  Meaning there is no economic cost to government spending whatsoever. The more the government spends, the richer we will all be. Let the Good Times roll." (06/18/13)

"The argument sounds sensible. Hollywood competition makes French (and, at large, European) cultural products basically niche products. The globalized world speaks English and that so to say 'reinforces' American dominance. As more resources flow to Hollywood as a result of its stronghold over a wider and wider potential market, the French movie industry is the Asterix village to the Roman empire of movies. Shouldn't they be helped a little bit?" (06/19/13)

"In The Ominous Parallels, written in 1982, the author, Leonard Peikoff compared the creeping regulations in America to the creeping regulations that occurred in Nazi Germany in the 1930s leading to the oppressive fascism of the 1940s. He then predicted that the ever-increasing government controls in America would eventually result in a fascist-style government, similar to Nazi Germany. At the time he wrote this, few believed that it was possible for fascism to take hold here in America, the land of the free. Indeed, I too, was incredulous in 1982 when the book was published. Well, I believe it now!" (06/18/13)

"Michael Gerson argues that the G.O.P., to remain relevant, must 'become more socially inclusive without becoming socially liberal' ('The GOP’s leadership reform challenge,' June 18). The details of his formula are sketchy, but we can infer from his many attacks on libertarianism that Mr. Gerson is warning Republicans against supporting same-sex marriage, drug legalization, and other pro-freedom policy reforms that are conventionally (if not always accurately) thought to be favored by the political left." (06/18/13)

"This week I was going to announce I was running for Congress. I was taking it very seriously and for the past three months this was the week I was planning on announcing. I had hired people to run the campaign. I had gotten great advice. I had studied the current incumbent in my district. I had spoken to party officials in BOTH parties who were receptive. I had spoken to local reporters who were going to cover it. I was even going through the process of being endorsed by a major national politician. I learned a lot. What I learned convinced me I couldn’t run and still be true to my values." (06/19/13)

"Consequentialism tells us it is good to do something if the consequences of doing it are good. But how do we judge if the consequences are good? If we do so by looking to their consequences, obviously we have entered an infinite regress. Therefore, we need non-consequentialist criteria for judging a consequence good or bad." (06/18/13)