Positive Liberty

The Washington Post has followed up on the story that it broke Wednesday regarding DC’s draconian DUI policy. Thursday’s edition has three pieces condemning the so-called “zero tolerance” approach, which has apparently sent quite a few people to jail, suspended their licenses, and/or send them to mandatory alcohol education programs–all for having as little as a glass of wine with dinner.

The first piece is an editorial saying many of the right things on the issue, although it does not identify what still seems to me the root of the problem: an agency of justice apparently more interested in gathering revenue than in separating the guilty from the innocent. The second reminds us that diplomacy would be perfectly insufferable for all involved if it did not sometimes involve having, shall we say, a drink or two. The third contains the following anecdote, which is simply too good to be true:

One young computer programmer said he spent the night in a D.C. jail on a drunken driving charge even though the breath test registered his blood alcohol content as 0.0 percent.

I guess they can’t call it zero tolerance anymore.

The end of what? Andrew Sullivan has a piece in The New Republic entitled “The End of Gay Culture.” It’s a good read, but I can’t for the life of me understand how the things he describes–successful gay community churches, gay sports teams playing against straight ones, and the diversification of his beloved Provincetown–constitute the “end” of gay culture. It sounds to me like a beginning, as though the gay subculture were dying so that a truer gay culture can be born. And we’ll always have need for a gay culture of some sort. How else would we meet interested men?

A hard promise to keep. I said something recently about trying to be less political now that I work for a nonpartisan government policy agency. I’ve blogged about politics a bit since then, but only on issues fairly well removed from domestic social policy, the area that I work in.

I do draw the line at political endorsements of any kind, though, so I will only note in passing that William Peirce, a professor emeritus at Case Western Reserve University, is the Libertarian Party’s nominee for Governor of Ohio in 2006. Years ago, Peirce advised the Case Libertarian student group, of which I was a founding member. He continually impressed me with his steadiness and his ability to explain difficult subjects; in a sense, I have always tried to model my own arguments on his.

Although I have had harsh words for the Libertarian Party in the past, Peirce is an inspired choice, and I would be hard-pressed to name a better candidate in the entire state. Libertarians virtually never have a meaningful chance at elected office, but given the disarray of Ohio’s current Republican administration, Peirce may make a far better showing than most. (Standard disclaimer: My views do not reflect those of my employer in any sense whatsoever.)

Like father, like son. My blogfather Dave Jansing has a great three part series on building community in the blogosphere. It’s simple advice, but it can be very difficult to follow. The times I’ve been happiest with my contributions to the blogosphere were when I actually did something like what he advises. The other times… ehh…

Photographic proof. Finally, a photograph of the only known time when two Positive Liberty bloggers were in the same room together. This photo shows me (left) and Sandefur (right) at the Cato Institute’s recent Constitution Day symposium:

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