Positive Liberty

Commenting on Rowe’s superb post below, Ruidh writes,

Because of all of the nonsense paraded forth as an example of “natural law”, I have a great deal of scepticism of its ultimate value. It seems to be an argument from prejudice and unthought as all one’s unexamined and unsupported assumptions become axioms in a logical house of cards. I’m certain that, with little effort, I could construct a natural law argument which concludes that men should all wear white shirts and ties when out in public. The key is to make your weakest argements irrefutable “observations from nature”.

There are ways to reason about ethics without resorting to much of the nonsense that passes under the Natural Law gateway.

He does have a point.

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This story (found via Andrew Sullivan) is pure, unadulterated bunk:

A 17TH-CENTURY firewater, more than two spoonfuls of which was said to be enough to kill a grown man, is to be revived by a whisky distillery in Scotland.

A single drop of the ancient drink of “usquebaugh-baul” was described by the travel writer Martin Martin in 1695 as powerful enough to affect “all members of the body.” He added: “Two spoonfuls of this last liquor is a sufficient dose; if any man should exceed this, it would presently stop his breath, and endanger his life.”

Ominously, the Times of London declares that Bruichladdich distillery aims to make enough of the brew to kill an “army.”

Nonsense. Hokum. Utter garbage. Assuming that the whisky’s ethyl alcohol content really is 92%, then two spoonfuls of the stuff would equal a whopping four spoonfuls of an ordinary 46%-alcohol whisky. It’s also the equivalent of twenty spoonfuls at 4.6% abv — or a good deal less than a tarted-up pint of beer.

Sure, it’ll be tough getting the concoction down, but it certainly won’t be fatal. Indeed, I’d gladly wager a full bottle of the stuff that I could imbibe a whopping ten teaspoons in an hour’s time, with no fatal aftereffects at all. (If you’re counting, this is supposedly enough to kill five grown men — or, by a generous estimate, it may just be the equivalent of five pints of beer. I’m sure I’d get plenty drunk, but if that’s the worst of my worries, then let the betting begin.)

Lastly, I’d also love to see a citation for the following claim. As an experienced homebrewer, I can say with some authority that it is flat-out false:

The US Secret Service admitted in 2003 that it had been monitoring the distillery because the difference between distilling a fine whisky and making chemical weapons was “just a small tweak”.

Hogwash. No part of brewing or distillation bears any resemblance to the manufacture of chemical weapons. None of the byproducts produced in brewing or distillation are at all similar to these weapons; structurally, ethyl alcohol itself is unlike any of the known chemical warfare agents; and no inherent dangers await the unwary brewer/distiller unless 1) he uses lead pipes, which are poisonous but far outside of the WMD-big leagues, or 2) he is careless with fire around the distillation equipment. These last are fairly minor risks that are encountered not just in distilling but in nearly all industrial food and chemical preparations.

Short form: This thing has “publicity stunt” written all over it. Want a real whisky? Try Laphroaig instead.

Update: I see that the Times has already taken the story down. Score one for common sense. See more of the hype here, here, here, and here.

As the old song from The Wiz says – you can’t win, you can’t break even, you can’t get out of the game. Via Radley Balko comes this libertarian joke:

Three guys are in a jail cell. They start to talking and find out that they’re all gas station owners.

The first one says, “I set my prices at a couple of cents higher than my competitors. I’m in here for price-gouging.”

The second one says “I set my prices at a couple of cents lower than my competitors. I’m in here for predatory practices.”

The third one says “I set my prices at the same price as my competitors. I’m in here for collusion!”

And here’s some evidence that this joke is, sadly, all too realistic. The state of Minnesota has just fined a gas station chain $140,000 for selling gas “below the state’s legal minimum price.” I’m sure glad we’ve got the government around to protect us consumers from lower prices, aren’t you?

Traffic: Sure, traffic congestion is a problem. Gary Becker has the answer — and it’s one that free-marketers will surely appreciate.

Adoption: Gays and lesbians are still relatively free to form adoptive families — for now. The Washington Blade reports that Ohio is the only state legislatively considering a new ban on gay adoptions this year, and it appears that the measure is unlikely to come up for a vote.

But, as the article notes, a number of states have other restrictions on adoption by gay people:

Florida is currently the only state to expressly ban adoption by all gay people, although Utah restricts adoption to married couples, effectively banning gays, according to the ACLU Lesbian & Gay Rights Project. Mississippi bans adoption by gay couples.

Arkansas and Nebraska do not ban adoption by lesbians and gay men, but do prohibit them from becoming foster parents, according to the ACLU.

Additionally, only seven states and the District of Columbia make legal provisions for same-sex second-parent adoptions (twenty others have awarded it at a judge’s discretion), and this is a matter of serious concern: Not having a second-parent adoption means that only one of the two parents may exercise legally defensible parental authority in medical decisions or interactions with the state. This may become crucially important if, for instance, the “legal” adoptive parent were to die or become incapacitated. Even the legal parent’s absence during an emergency may cause serious problems.

What worries me most is this, though: As more and more states pass constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, will gay adoption be next? There’s little need to be concerned about it at the moment, but the ongoing moral panic against gay people has got to be sustained somehow, and banning gay adoption does seem to be the next logical step toward ensuring that gay people may never enjoy legal protections for their families.

But these steps, we are told, all help to strengthen heterosexual unions. To this end, no hypothetical threat is so remote that our wise legislators will not answer it; no price is too high to pay when it comes to protecting the traditional family. Why, gay and lesbian families should be proud of their sacrifices, which help to strengthen America itself. It is said that these restrictions are — what else? — for the good of the children.

Genetics? In other news, there is now still more evidence for a biological basis to homosexual orientation. Trey of Daddy, Papa, and Me explains,

The overwhelming majority of females have two X chromosomes (some have three or 1 or…), one from their mother (we’ll call that Xm) and one from their father (we’ll call it Xp… for papa of course). Men have only one X chromosome, from their mother and the y from their father. Cells in the body need only one X chromosome, so some cells in the body turn of Xm while others turn of Xp. It’s called x-inactivation. It’s a random process so you’d expect to see half of the cells using Xp and the other half using Xm.

Sometimes though there is a ’skewing’ of the percentages so one is turned off in the majority of the cells. This usually suggests that there is some type of genetic hanky panky going on.

Hamer’s lab found that in women that had gay sons, this was highly skewed. In fact, 1/4 of those women had all their cells with only one type of X chromosome turned off… extreme skewing.

What does this all mean? Well, it suggests that the genes (and I believe it is several) that are involved in sexuality are on the X chromosome (which we have evidence for already both genetically and anecdotally), but other than that, they don’t know what’s going on exactly.

The study needs more and was relatively small (though statistically significant), but it is adding to the mounting evidence that sexuality has a strong genetic component.

Kids These Days: In my ongoing effort to avoid receiving a Koufax Award — given to the best of the lefty blogosphere — here is a great piece by conservative author Theodore Dalrymple on A Clockwork Orange. Not that I’m a conservative either, but…

This piece on Princeton’s Robbie George inspired some thoughts on the natural law. The natural law is what man can know from his reason unassisted by revelation or other sorts of unargued dogma. The natural law is Capital T Truth, something non-negotiable, and True regardless of how many people do or don’t believe in it. For instance, even if 99% of the population denied 2+2 = 4, they’d still be wrong.

Natural law is often associated with a religious point of view — doctrinaire Catholicism, because the Church’s teachings have embraced the natural law through Aquinas.

But Aquinas didn’t “invent” this concept — the Pagan philosopher Aristotle did. And Reason itself is not beholden to any Church’s doctrine; rather it’s supposed to be the other way around. As Allan Bloom wrote in The Closing of the American Mind, “Aristotle…was used as an authority almost on a level with the Church Fathers and was assimilated to them. This was, of course, an abuse of Aristotle, who thought that authority is the contrary of philosophy….The essence of philosophy is the abandonment of all authority in favor of individual human reason.” pp. 252-3. Continue Reading »

The Washington State Legislature has refused to do anything about eminent domain. I wish I could say this was a surprise.

Amber Taylor has a very interesting response to my post about nudity. I asked if the prevalence of female nudes in art and advertising was due to our allegedly sexist culture, or due to the fact that women really are just prettier. I took the latter choice, and Taylor takes the former. Of course, it seems to me one of those chicken and the egg questions; unless we could find some culture that we agreed wasn’t tinged with sexism historically, and then looked at their art, maybe.

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Just ran across In re Capers’ Estate, 34 Pa. D. & C.2d 121 (1963), a decision of the Orphan’s Court of Pennsylvania, whatever that is, in which the court addressed a curious will provision. Mrs. Capers’ will declared that, upon her death, she wanted her two dogs, Brickland and Sunny Birch, to be “destroyed in a humane manner.” The question upon her death was, should the dogs be put to sleep right away, or did she just mean, once they got sick? The dogs were in fine shape, and the executors didn’t want to kill these innocent animals. They sought declaratory relief. “The tradition of this court is to consider with care all matters that come before it, whether they concern the disposition of animals of small value or estates of vast resources,” the court said. Id. at 122. It quoted at length from a speech by Missouri Senator George Vest when he was a lawyer trying a case about a neighbor killing a dog. It quoted from Albert Schweitzer about the reverence for life. Id. at 130-31. It quoted opinions of the Attorney General and other works, and concluded that

it indeed would be unethical to carry out the literal provisions of paragraph five of decedent’s will. Paragraph 5 of decedent’s will would confiscate the life of the two setters for no purpose. It would be an act of cruelty that is not sanctioned by the traditions and purposes of this court, and would conflict with its established public policy.

Id. at 132. Yay!

Look at this horrific instance of sexual brazenness rebelling against important moral signposts.

Don’t people understand that sexual liberation only liberates the predatory male? This is just an instance of disregarding all moral responsibility, raging against the minimum needs of social order, and raising the individual freedom’s to unbridled expression of every desire, intellectual or emotional to the status of an absolute end. This sort of thing is really the first step toward the repeal of laws regulating sexual mores by whatever means necessary, as a step toward discrediting society’s traditional religious norms about the meaning and significance of human sexuality. And this is dangerous because sexual liberationism is the means of weakening one of the principal bases of traditional order—i.e., the family. This is all part of a progressive de-moralization of human sexuality which emphasizes consent as the only relevant criterion with regard to sex and therefore threatens the very roots of our society. Shameful.

But then, Liberty is, and always has been, a sexy lady.

Some interesting comments at Drowned At The River. I still think Roslin’s decision is not a wise choice even if it’s based solely on pragmatic concerns about reproduction. Reproduction rates will be better improved by providing incentives for large families than by punishing abortion. And it appears that the anti-abortion position of the Geminese is actually the minority position within the fleet, so it hardly makes electoral sense for her to adopt the position of an extreme religious minority. As for the statement “Maybe ‘freedom’ isn’t primary concern when faced with the extinction of your species. What about the freedom of all of those people that haven’t yet been born, and won’t ever be born if humanity’s candle goes out?”—well, if Roslin’s going to eliminate individual rights in order to propagate the species, why not legalize rape?

The weblog Snarky Bastards just started a few days ago. Already it looks very sharp — and far more serious than its name would suggest. Here are some of my favorite bits:

Here’s a story in the Post about those mean-spirited Republicans wanting to cut the state budget rather than raise taxes. Of course the poor will be poorer, kids won’t learn, and, evidently, people in Southewestern Virginia won’t get any drinking water. Considering the Commonwealth’s “Republicans” went along for a massive tax increase just a couple of years ago, this is mildly refreshing…

and

Strictly speaking, conservatism is not really a philosophy but a disposition against radical change. That is why conservative opinions are generally based on some mixture of gut and logic, and why conservatives around the world really have very little in common. Conservatism is actually pretty amoral when you think about it; you have to get past that disposition and figure out what exactly you are conserving….

and

Our first commentator, Em (back when we were experimenting with Blogger), asked how fiscal conservatism tied in with social issues. “Tax policy is social policy,” said the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan. We get more of what we subsidize, and less of what we tax; right now the government pays people not to farm, and taxes hard work. A related problem is that when politicians waste money, they usually pay no penalty, which leads to more waste… One thing I think all contributors agree on is the need to stop waste, so here’s a quote from the inaugural address of one of my heroes, Calvin Coolidge:

“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of government. Every dollar we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.”

Coolidge may be one of the most underrated presidents we’ve ever had — right up there with Grover Cleveland — and this is a quote well worth remembering. I look forward to making the Snarky Bastards a daily read, and I hope that you will, too.

Meanwhile, in business news,

The actor Damon Wayans has been engaged in a 14-month fight to trademark the term “Nigga” for a clothing line and retail store, a search of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s online database reveals.

Stop the Presses…straight white conservative Christian males are officially a “protected category” under our civil rights laws and possess all of the “special rights” appurtenant thereto. Continue Reading »

At the risk of being called arrogant for daring to tell another country what they should and shouldn’t do (not that I really care, mind you – if it’s arrogant to insist that liberty be protected everywhere at all times, then I’m proudly arrogant), here’s yet another instance of our European allies throwing away free speech:

A German court on Thursday convicted a businessman of insulting Islam by printing the word “Koran” on toilet paper and offering it to mosques.

The 61-year-old man, identified only as Manfred van H., was given a one-year jail sentence, suspended for five years, and ordered to complete 300 hours of community service, a district court in the western German town of Luedinghausen ruled…

The maximum sentence for insulting religious beliefs under the German criminal code is three years in prison.

Was the man’s stunt juvenile and stupid? Absolutely. Was it criminal? Absolutely not. And anyone who would run screaming to the government to throw someone who did it in prison just needs to grow up. Join the real world, where you are going to be offended from time to time. You want to villify the guy as an idiot? Be my guest. I’ll join you. You want to throw him in prison? Then you’re a tyrant, plain and simple.

For those who think that the whole Muhammed cartoon issue is just a European issue, let me give some examples of how the zeal to repress anything that someone might find offensive is spreading to American colleges. FIRE is reporting on a number of controversies, the latest of which is a student at the University of Chicago who faces possible expulsion from the dorms there for putting up a commentary about the controversy on his dorm room door with a sketch of Mohammed and the text Mo’ Mohammed, Mo’ Problems. He was forced to take it down and to apologize to a student who complained, but still faces possible disciplinary action by the university and is under investigation currently.

At Century College in Minnesota, a professor put up a display on a bulletin board that included the 12 caricatures, articles about the controversy from around the world and sheets for people to comment on it. After the display was torn down anonymously, she was told by a “senior faculty member” not to put the display back up. Many college newspapers have reprinted the caricatures, but at more than one the editor was punished or fired for doing so.

Let’s change the situation around a bit. Suppose instead that a student posted a commentary that indicated that they thought Christianity was the cause of problems in world history and that more Christianity meant more problems. Would there be any controversy over that? Some would disagree, of course, but would university officials with titles like “director of multicultural affairs” be “investigating” and holding forums with aggrieved Christian students to make sure their feelings are sufficently protected? Not on your life. And that’s as it should be.

It’s a university, for crying out loud. If you don’t run into ideas that shake you up, there’s no point in going. You’re going to have to confront ideas that you find offensive, absurd, even dangerous. If you’re not prepared to do that without trying to censor the person advocating those ideas, you’re simply in the wrong place. Go to Bob Jones University where the only textbook is the bible and you’ll never ever have to think for yourself, or to a Madrassa to study only the Quran. But if you’re at a real university, you’re just going to have to toughen up and deal with it or leave.

I confess to being surprised at the controversy over the cover of Vanity Fair. The story here is a classic story of freedom of choice. Ms. McAdams, asked to pose for the cover, chose not to reveal herself, and if people want to reward her for that choice, they can do so, while others can reward Ms. Knightley and Ms. Johansson for choosing to go nude. (In fact, this is probably a wise choice on McAdams’ part; I remembered her name when writing this, and had to look up the others’.)

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Huh. Maybe.

Alan Dershowitz and William Bennett have an excellent joint editorial in the Post:

We two come from different political and philosophical perspectives, but on this we agree: Over the past few weeks, the press has betrayed not only its duties but its responsibilities. To our knowledge, only three print newspapers have followed their true calling: the Austin American-Statesman, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Sun. What have they done? They simply printed cartoons that were at the center of widespread turmoil among Muslims over depictions of the prophet Muhammad. These papers did their duty.

Since the war on terrorism began, the mainstream press has had no problem printing stories and pictures that challenged the administration and, in the view of some, compromised our war and peace efforts. The manifold images of abuse at Abu Ghraib come to mind…. The press has had no problem with breaking a story using classified information on detention centers for captured terrorists and suspects — stories that could harm our allies. And it disclosed a surveillance program so highly classified that most members of Congress were unaware of it.

In its zeal to publish stories critical of our nation’s efforts — and clearly upsetting to enemies and allies alike — the press has printed some articles that turned out to be inaccurate. The Guantanamo Bay flushing of the Koran comes to mind.

But for the past month, the Islamist street has been on an intifada over cartoons depicting Muhammad that were first published months ago in a Danish newspaper. Protests in London — never mind Jordan, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Iran and other countries not noted for their commitment to democratic principles — included signs that read, “Behead those who insult Islam.” The mainstream U.S. media have covered this worldwide uprising; it is, after all, a glimpse into the sentiments of our enemy and its allies. And yet it has refused, with but a few exceptions, to show the cartoons that purportedly caused all the outrage.

Interesting case in Florida where a Wiccan group is suing the state because they exempt bibles from the state sales tax, but not other religious books. Naturally, religious right legal groups are defending the law because, truth be told, their goal is to preserve government benefits exclusively for their religion and not for others. Liberty Counsel, for example, has filed a brief in the case and makes a couple of unusual arguments in this article from Agape Press. He says:

However, Staver maintains that the Florida statute being contested is constitutional. “The case that the Wiccans have relied upon is really not good law anymore,” he says. “The case that they are relying upon comes out of Texas, and in that case, the sales tax exemption was struck down because it only exempted religious publications and Bibles, but not secular publications.”

According to the pro-family attorney, that ruling does not apply to Florida because the state has a broader exemption.

The precedent referred to is Texas Monthly v Bullock, a 1989 case that overturned a Texas law that exempted religious publications from the state sales tax. Florida’s law exempts not only bibles but a wide range of educational publications as well and Staver apparently thinks that will save that law from the same fate. But I would argue that this distinction may in fact make the case stronger.
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Jennifer Roback Morse’s new article struggles with how to properly interpret and understand some of the same-sex survey data. She attempts to “deconstruct” the “sexual orientation” category. She writes:

“[H]omosexuality is not a well-defined phenomenon. It is a complex combination of behavior, attraction and self-identification. For instance, the definitive University of Chicago study by Edward Laumann and colleagues, showed that only a minuscule less than one percent of the population have had exclusively same sex partners since puberty.”

She also attempts to hold sexual orientation to an unreasonable “civil rights” standard, arguing that in order to “qualify” as a legitimate “protected category” sexual orientation must make some type of near perfect analogy to race. She writes: Continue Reading »