Tag Archives: liberty

Billionaire Russian Roman Abramovich’s Yacht in New York

The biggest yacht in the world, owned by a Russian billionaire, came down the Hudson River today: __________ Here’s more footage of it: __________ It will be docked in New York for perhaps a month or more, establishing temporary residency. … Continue reading

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Rick Warren: Gay Orientation Is Natural, Like Arsenic

Rick Warren recently said on CNN that, if you’re gay and act on your orientation, you’re doing something akin to punching a person in the nose or cheating on your spouse! Oh, and being gay is like arsenic. Here’s his … Continue reading

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Twitter Blasphemy: 18,000 Facebookers Call for the Death of Feminist Hamza Kashgari for Insulting the Prophet Muhammad

As of this morning, 18,000 is the number of Facebookers calling for the death of Hamza Kashgari for Twitter blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad. The number was 8,000 on Thursday, 13,000 on Friday, and 16,000 on Saturday. Does anyone know … Continue reading

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Twitter Blasphemy: 16,000 Facebookers Agree That Hamza Kashgari Should Be Executed for Insulting the Prophet

The number of people who have joined a Facebook page calling for the death of Hamza Kashgari for Twitter blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad has climbed from 8,000 on Thursday to 16,000 this morning (I just checked the page). Yesterday, … Continue reading

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Rick Santorum on Contraception: The State Can Take Your Rubber (But Not Your Gun)

Republican Rick Santorum is okay with a state enacting laws that ban, or otherwise criminalize, the use of contraception (condoms, the pill, etc.). He doesn’t believe that the use of contraception is a basic human right. As with marijuana, a … Continue reading

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The New Ball(s) and Chain Watch: Hanna Rosin on the Historic Rise of Women and the Decline of Men

For all of recorded history, men have dominated the public sphere (and the domestic private sphere as well, as in the pater familias). But the 21st century is in the midst of a historic pivot: women appear to be on their way … Continue reading

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Muslim American Collective Guilt for 9-11 as the New McCarthyism: Robert Wright Says Yes to the Ground Zero Mosque and Deconstructs Rick Lazio and the Weekly Standard

Robert Wright has thought a lot about Islam and its relation to violence, and in his recent magisterial survey of Western religion, The Evolution of God  (Little, Brown 2009), he writes five chapters on Islam, including one that is wholly devoted to the subject … Continue reading

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Do You Support a Burqa Ban in France?

About 2000 Muslim women in France wear the full body burqa, and the French Parliament is slated to vote on its ban Tuesday. The idea of a burqa ban is popular in France (in polls, about 80% of French citizens tend to … Continue reading

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Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun (16 April 1755 – 30 March 1842): Three Self Portraits

Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun was the most famous female painter of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In her portraitures she shows herself to be no retiring violet, but returns the Western male gaze in a wonderfully assertive fashion. Here she … Continue reading

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John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) on Hell Belief and Critical Thinking

In John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography  is a brilliant reflection on hell belief: he argues that belief in hell is made paradoxically both strong and weak by an across the board system failure in critical thinking. Here are the two critical thinking errors that Mill … Continue reading

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Alexander McCobin: The Future of the Republican Party?

I hope so. Alexander McCobin is a coherent libertarian and here he is standing up for gay rights in the face of more than a little crowd resistance. I salute the young conservatives in the crowd who loudly applauded McCobin and stood with … Continue reading

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Doobie Doobie Do—in California?

Expanding liberty and consciousness—and traffic accidents—in California? Pot seems to be headed for the ballot this year. This today from Reason: It looks like a marijuana legalization initiative will be on the ballot in California this fall. Today the backers of the … Continue reading

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Matt Barber on Barack Obama’s Hiring of a Transgendered Bureaucrat

According to the New Republic today, Matt Barber, an associate dean at the Orwellian named Liberty University, had the following response on hearing that a transgendered person had been hired to work in the federal bureaucracy: [It] boggles the mind. What boggles … Continue reading

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Nanny State Watch: Fire-Safe Cigarettes Are Intrusive Upon Human Liberty

I don’t smoke, and I didn’t know there was such a thing as fire-safe cigarettes, but apparently there are states legislating their sale, and Andrew Sullivan today got a life-affirming rant from one of his readers about them. Money quote: We … Continue reading

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Quote for a Saturday

Thomas Jefferson: “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” Hat tip to Jonolan.

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Four Great Quotes from John Stewart Mill

Here are four good John Stuart Mill quotes: “The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the … Continue reading

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Doobie, Doobie Do? Obama Calls off the Federal Pot Patrol!

This should make President Obama’s approval ratings hippity hop. According to GOOD, Obama has done something VERY CONSERVATIVE. He has called off the Federal marijuana dogs from interfering with state weed laws. States’ rights, right? Individual libertarian liberty? I’m waiting for … Continue reading

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Offended?

Tough. I like this quote of Nietzsche’s as a response to those who would feign to protect sensibilities or feelings by censoring speech: Life is hard to bear, but do not affect to be so delicate. Source: Quotation at the beginning … Continue reading

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What’s Good for the Goose

This brilliant idea comes from Tom Ackerman via Andrew Sullivan’s blog: Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend. She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband,” “Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.” The impact is obvious. I tried … Continue reading

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Gay Marriage Equality: Dan Savage Goes Toe to Toe With An Emotionally Impervious Religious Authoritarian Bigot

I admire Dan Savage’s effort to assert the equality and dignity of gay people on national television, but the imperviousness and cold lawyerly sheen of his opponent is frankly unnerving, and tells us a great deal about what the gay … Continue reading

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