To begin with, the confusion is grotesque, not the inestimable Samuel Barr – I must post if only to stress that. Said grotesquerie is an innocuous, though unfortunate, consequence of progressivism, in the same manner that my ineptitude at mathematics (which could only charitably be called grotesque) is an unfortate consequence of being a social … Read more
I know that Daniel is only trying to soften his blows, but really, I don’t think my argument can be “innocuous” and “unfortunate” at the same time. Come on, tell me what you really think! I can appreciate how it seems that liberals are always in the business of telling people what rights they do … Read more
With all this talk about gay marriage, we eventually have to come to the question: Who decides? Who gets to say whether we will have gay marriage or not? And that question eventually becomes, Is it okay for courts to legalize gay marriage if legislatures won’t? Publius over at Obsidian Wings has some interesting thoughts … Read more
When the Secretary of State does things like visit Lebanon to express her not-so-subtly-veiled hope that Hezbollah will not win the elections, I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing. One does not have to wish for a Hezbollah victory to have some doubts about the real wisdom of our involving ourselves so heavily in … Read more
Danny B, who thankfully is the first person ever to accuse me of “grotesque confusion” (in those exact terms at least), takes the true libertarian line on gay marriage. Yet the degree to which he grants some pretty questionable conservative assumptions surprises me. I’m not sure exactly what Daniel means by “civil society,” but surely … Read more
Marriage isn’t really one of my issues, and as HPR’s libertarian-in-residence (though I’d proudly call myself an American reactionary) the entire gay marriage debacle is not one of my priorities. There are a couple things I’d like to point out in response to the post below, first being the grotesque confusion of liberty and equality … Read more
Over at the Corner, Matthew Franck finds much wisdom in the following teleological view of marriage: “The essential purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. Absent this purpose, we would not need marriage as a distinct social institution.” I responded to him by email, and hope … Read more
As this blog’s resident conservative I have to take umbrage to Sam’s article below, in which he ascribes to Republicans a reactionary stance towards Obama fiscal policy. It’s true, there are many in my party who seem to want to make it the party of no. Yet I would not go so far as to … Read more
Chris, I fear, has read too much into my use of the word “reactionary.” I meant only to suggest that Republicans have gone with libertarianism over, say, Huckabee-ism or Olympia Snowe-ism, because they are reacting to Obama’s ambitious economic progressivism. This is exactly what we would expect from a minority party: the majority gets to … Read more
Actually, I’d guess Sam meant to say “reactive” rather than “reactionary”. In a narrow technical sense, however, I’d define the Republican Party as reactionary. While the term is often pejorative, it simply means a group or ideology that seeks a return to a previous state. The Republican Party is pretty open about its desire to roll … Read more