Positive Liberty

Apparently there is a Ten Commandments case coming to the Supreme Court this term. It doesn’t appear to be an Establishment Clause case, but a Free Speech case. It’s called Pleasant Grove City v. Summum. The facts behind the case:

Founded in Salt Lake City in 1975, the Summum faith believes Moses originally descended from Mount Sinai not with the Ten Commandments, but with a set of seven principles - or aphorisms - that he revealed to only a select few. Over the last decade, leaders of the faith have sought to erect monuments of the aphorisms in numerous Utah towns alongside displays of the Ten Commandments donated by private organizations.

Continue Reading »

For those who don’t know, the Supreme Court term runs from October to May, so their 08-09 term will begin soon. The following prospective comes from the LIIBulletin, a service of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University. They release syllabi of each decision as it is announced through the year, with links to full-text versions of the opinions. If you are an inveterate court-watcher who just can’t wait to be informed, you can sign up for the LIIbulletin. Now, on to their prospective. Continue Reading »

It’s been 21 days since I posted to the blog. A new computer install and a road trip/speaking gig on behalf of DownsizeDC.org have consumed my time of late. I also started, but haven’t yet completed longer blog posts on the homeschooling issue (the big debate that was raging here three weeks ago). But I promised I’d keep you posted on Bob Barr’s lawsuit to keep McCain and Obama off the ballot because they filed late.

And I predicted that Texas judges would say, “Don’t worry Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain: You two are exceptions to our ‘late-filing, no ballot access, no exceptions‘ rule.”

I mean, it’s not like McCain and Obama are from minority political parties, right? Ballot access laws are for Libertarians, Constitutionalists, Greens, or even the Female Circumcision Party.

Well, the expected happened. The Texas Supreme Court ruled that Obama and McCain are allowed on the ballot — and wait till you see their explanation!

Here’s more of the story as reported at NolanChart.com… Continue Reading »

Not my words or accusation, folks! The quip is thanks to Christopher Hitchens, and the scolding thanks to Jacob Weisberg, both men writing in Slate, the web-mag so ruthlessly crammed with middle-brow analysis that the hairs tickle its navel.

A federal judge has ruled that Riveria Beach, Florida’s, baggy pants ban is unconstitutional.

Somebody help me,” said Palm Beach Circuit Judge Paul Moyle, before giving his decision.
“We’re not talking about exposure of buttocks. No! We’re talking about someone who has on pants whose underwear are apparently visible to a police officer who then makes an arrest and the basis is he’s then held overnight, no bond.”

Never fear, though. The moralists aren’t giving up. Dallas and Atlanta are both reportedly considering such bans. And the police chief of Pine Lawn, Missouri, where at least 17 baggy pants tickets have been issued, is pleased with his town’s sartorial statute.

It is working in our community…When the children walk the streets now it seems like they look more like children now instead of their appearance making them look like thugs.

With economic hell allegedly breaking loose, and a never ending war on terrorism, it’s a relief to know that our cities are focused on the critical issues of our times.

It boils down to this: I’d much rather live in a world where young people dress like fools, than in a world where government has abrogated the right to determine how any of us dress.

Jim Babka asks, “What are bootleggers and baptists?” Because I like to hog the limelight, I thought I’d answer with a post.

Bootleggers are people illegally sell alcohol, and Baptists are a Christian sect who believe you need to be baptized to get into heaven. (Notably, bootleggers sometimes are Baptists.)

OK, enough of the smartass answers. “Bootleggers and Baptists” is a phrase coined by economist Bruce Yandle in a Reason article in 1983, to examine how certain types of government regulations come into being, particularly what I would call moralistic regulation. Continue Reading »

Last Saturday I took my family to Indiana for the Oregon-Purdue football game. As a life-long Purdue fan, but a UO alum, I was torn (I wore an Oregon shirt and a Purdue cap), but ultimately wanted Oregon to win. In the stands a few rows behind us were some Purdue students, who began by being very obnoxious, but who toned it down considerably after a few well-placed comments.

It began when one of them said “F***” very loudly. I’m pretty profane myself, but this was in front of my kids and my elderly mother. Fortunately another person in their vicinity said, “Dude, the F word? That’s not cool,” and the profanity stopped.

However the general obnoxiousness and rude comments continued, so I turned around, pointed to my Purdue hat, and said, “I was at the Oregon-Michigan game last year, and the Michigan fans were great. As a life-long Purdue fan, it really bothers me to have to say that Michigan fans are classier than Purdue fans.” They didn’t react well to that, but their comments did diminish a little more.

The best part, however, was my 7 year old daughter turning around and saying, “Why are you being so mean? We’re not being mean to you,” which took their rhetoric down another notch again. They didn’t shut up until the end of the game, and remained obnoxious, but they also remained on the socially acceptable side in their comments.

The moral of the story? While I am vigorously opposed to censorship, and support a person’s right to yell F*** in a crowded stadium, I also believe in the social enforcement of more considerate behavior. A desire to limit government is not a desire to eliminate social structure, and the more solid our social structure, the less government we require. That plays out in a lot of ways: the more people take care of family and friends, the less government welfare is needed; the more people engage in neighborhood watch programs, the less policing is needed, etc. And it’s at least plausible that the more we are willing to say to each other, “that’s not appropriate language in this setting, the less demand there will be for government censorship.

My undergrad mentor, Charles McCall, an avowed Burkean conservative, used to say we should bring back the stocks as punishment. I often suspect he’s right–a little public shaming might be a greater deterrent to future criminal behavior than a year in prison.

Michael Newdow, the atheist who got the 9th Circuit to scrap “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, has been compared to a modern day Madalyn Murray O’Hair; but I think the comparison is inapt. They do have similarities. Obviously their atheist activism. Plus both are (were) intelligent, capable of well arguing their case.

However, when it comes to their personalities, the two are the difference between night and day. O’Hair was unlikable, clownish and obnoxious and got off on mocking and prodding her enemies with her abrasive personality. See the following clips: Continue Reading »

Though I might sympathize more with the secular side, there is a certain kind of secular activism which I am squarely against: Trying to purge from public square historic names, seals, flags, whatnot, any vestige of “religion” because such intimates government endorsement of Christianity.

Eugene Volokh noted one such case where the 10th Circuit held that it’s constitutional for Las Cruces’ City Seal to have three crosses. See the pic.

I think the problem is, America, in principle, indeed has a “core value” that really doesn’t favor Christianity over other religions, but rather holds all “religion” have an equal place at the table with secular and pagan philosophies. But this value wasn’t meant to work itself out this way, where through court litigation all vestiges of religious imagery that could be potentially interpreted as endorsing one religion over another had to be extirpated from the public square.

If you look at America’s and Western Civilization’s cultural heritage, it’s every bit as pagan (chiefly Greco-Roman, but also Anglo-Saxon paganism) as it is Judeo-Christian. Does having the 5th day of the week named after my favorite Deity Thor the Thunder God signify Thor Worship? Or does having the third month of the year named after Mars bringer of war imply we are a Greek God worshipping nation? In America lots of names of public places reflect our pagan Native American heritage; for instance “Kansas” comes from the Kanza Indians which translates as “People of the Southwind.”

If we can get the handful of nuisance secularists (it only takes one person to file a lawsuit) to understand these things are the equivalent of Mars and Thor worship perhaps they’d stop filing these silly lawsuits. But we also need to get the religious side to understand America was NOT founded to be a “Christian Nation” in a public or civil sense. They irk the secular side on with their specious “Christian Nation” arguments.

One of the biggest problems with presidential campaigns in the contemporary era is that we let the public vote for the parties’ nominees.  In the old days, party activists and elders chose the nominees at the national convention, which mostly led to nominees who had managed not offend any major factions within the party–often they were bland, unimaginative men who neither promised nor delivered much.  Today nominees have to be ambitious self-starters, people with the drive to appeal to mass publics, because the selection process takes place through state primaries and caucuses.  This forces them to engage in a game of “promise early, promise often,” which leads to unrealistic expectations. 

But that’s only the half of it.  Continue Reading »

Much has been made, already, both on TV and the Internet, about Sarah Palin’s support for “teaching creationism.” I’ll come back to her in a moment.

I believe Darwinian evolution is the best explanation of humanity’s natural history. I didn’t arrive at that view easily. I was raised to believe in a literal six day creation. But as soon as I investigated a bit, I found out how unlikely and untenable this idea is.

However, I didn’t stop my investigation there. When I realized that six day creation didn’t happen, I began reading up on Intelligent Design. I had high hopes for this viewpoint. Long story short, in the Summer of 2005 (I know, such a long time ago, right?) I figured out that ID was bunk.And I endeavored to begin to understand better how “Darwin’s Machine” worked.

I am not alone. As I’ve written about on this blog, tens of thousands of conservative Christians have made a journey similar to mine during this 21st century. We recognize evolution is NOT a threat to our faith (much as some might wish to make it so).

Fresh from my enlightenment, I outlined some of the things that were influential in that process on my old blog. But I’d like to say something more philosophical here. Continue Reading »

I found this interesting bit on my brother’s blog. Apparently John McCain told a newspaper in Peublo, Colorado, that the Colorado River Compact should be renegotiated to give the southwestern members–Arizona, Nevada, and California–a larger share of the Colorado River’s water.

A little background for those who don’t follow western water issues, which are among the most contentious and fascinating but little known politics in the country. (The Eastern media don’t cover it much, because it mostly plays out in flyover country–places where news execs go to rent a fancy cabin and do a little flyfishing while interacting with the locals as little as possible.) The Colorado River Compact was created to deal with the issues of using the water in the Colorado River. It’s a classic collective action problem: no one state has an incentive to conserve the water, but collectively their incautious use is destructive. Mexico is also a partner to the Colorado River, but not to the Compact, and often so much water gets taken out that the river dries up before reaching Mexico, and what does get there is a sludge of agricultural pesticide runoff. (In contrast, the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec are Associate Members of the Great Lakes Compact, so Canada’s voce is heard in those matters.)

But traditionally California has gotten the lion’s share of the water, and Arizona, with an ever-growing Phoenix, keeps claiming more and more. Recognizing that a long-established use of water is harder to reverse than a new claim to more water, the more northerly states in the Compact, particularly Colorado, which is also ever-growing, have been fighting tooth and nail to prevent California and Arizona from getting rights to more water, which would limit how much Colorado could use.

So McCain’s comments, if played up by Obama, could easily cost him Colorado’s electoral votes. Colorado, having had an influx of Californians in the ’90s and ’00s, keeps edging closer to going into the Democratic column. Had it done so in either 2000 or 2004, the Democrats would have won the presidency. McCain’s odds of winning the presidency without Colorado–slimmer than Kate Moss’s ass.

Mind you, I don’t pay any credence to the rumors over presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, presumptive president, presumptive messiah and just plain presumptive Barack Obama’s citizenship qualifications, but if by any stretch of the imagination it turned out after he won that he wasn’t constitutionally a natural born citizen, shouldn’t that mean the Republicans can run this guy in 2012?

School starts today. My school that is. My children’s school doesn’t start for another week, which means either they have to sit at home alone watching TV, sit in my office being bored (and distracting me), or I have to pay someone to watch them.

It didn’t use to be this way. Once upon a time, my kids started school a week before I did, which gave me a free week to finish preparing for my classes. But three years ago the Michigan legislature passed a bill that prohibits public schools from beginning classes before Labor Day. Why? Continue Reading »

It is a cliché among many psychologists and economists that human beings behave self-interestedly. Moreover, since Adam Smith’s somewhat theological, somewhat anthropomorphic “invisible hand” metaphor, it has been almost an article of faith within the latter discipline that the collective, societal result of individual self-interested behavior is ironically salubrious.

It is a faith to which I also ascribe, although like all but the most zealous of religious fanatics I season that faith with the occasional heresy here and there. Crucially, however, it needs to be noted at the outset that not just any sort of self-interested behavior contributes to the common wealth and greater good. Specialization and trade, voluntary association, bargained-for exchanges, common rules and some sort of enforcement mechanism to address rule breaking are all necessary elements for human society to flourish economically, for the invisible hand to prove, as it were, optimally dexterous.

Most importantly, “self-interested” is not synonymous with “selfish.” Continue Reading »