I’m going to follow Eugene Volokh’s lead and put in a good word for the Institute for Justice.

The Institute for Justice is a civil liberties public interest law firm that focuses largely on those areas of most interest to libertarians (e.g. property rights, free speech, school choice, etc.) As their website describes their work:

Simply put, we sue the government when it stands in the way of people trying to earn an honest living, when it unconstitutionally takes away individuals’ property, when bureaucrats instead of parents dictate the education of children, and when government stifles speech. We seek a rule of law under which individuals can control their destinies as free and responsible members of society.

If these are things you believe are worth supporting, then I urge you to support the Institute for Justice, as I do.

Also, if you are as outraged by the recent Kelo decision as I am, you might consider giving particular support to their Castle Coalition project which focuses on eminent domain abuse in particular.

And this gives me a chance to repeat my praise of justice Thomas and another excellent dissenting opinion.

Kerry Howley at Reason has a nice piece up about the recent controversy about Microsoft’s MSN Spaces blog software enforcing Chinese censorship against certain words used in blog entry titles.

I agree that the criticisms of Microsoft are silly, and that those bloggers who want to circumvent restrictions will easily be able to do it.

My main complaint, though, is that it seems to be very common for people to criticize some person or company (particularly Microsoft) by comparing the actions to an imagined ideal, rather than currently realistic alternatives. They are letting the unrealizable perfect become the enemy of the good.

The question is NOT: “Should Microsoft refuse to comply with these restrictive Chinese laws and bring down Chinese repression by the sheer force of its moral rightiousness?” This is just not a realistic possiblity.

The question is: “Would things be better if Microsoft supplied Chinese bloggers with a, somewhat restricted, forum for sharing information and ideas; or none at all?”

These are the realistic alternatives, and the answer seems obvious to me.

Matt Welch has written a nice, short, article about how the Raich decision helps enable the government’s addiction to lying about drugs in general and marijuana in particular.

The War on Drugs aggravates me on many levels.

It aggravates me philosophically because it violates individual liberty and responsibility for risk-taking. It’s just wrong to forcibly prevent someone from acting on a considered judgment about what to consume or buy for personal use.

It aggravates me practically because of all of the waste, corruption, liberty infringements, and real crime that come with prohibition. Especially now, when we have genuine security threats to focus on, this misuse of resources to do much more harm than good is particularly infuriating.

I was going to write a post praising Clarence Thomas for his reasonable decision in
Gonzalez v. Raich
today, but Radley Balko already did it, with all of the good quotes, here. I’ll just quote part of the opening paragraph of Thomas’ dissent:

If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.

Thomas insists on interpreting the Constitution as limiting federal power. Others seem to see it as allowing federal power limited only by whether or not they happen to like the particular policy.

I hope Bush has the opportunity to appoint several more Justices like Clarence Thomas. Unfortunately, I’m sure that someone like that would trigger the “extraordinary circumstances” loophole to the filibuster compromise.

I can’t say that I’m surprised by the decision. I expected the left-liberals on the Court to side with virtually unlimited federal power. I was curious which way Scalia and Kennedy would go, and the anti-drug-user weasels showed their colors. So, I guess the case is valuable to show us where they stand.

I’d also like to mention that I think Randy Barnett did a great job of arguing the case, and his work really seemed to connect with Thomas’ thinking as Thomas quoted him three times in the dissenting opinion.

Eugene Volokh has written a good post about forcing religious morality on others. It’s similar to the argument he made here.

Eugene argues, correctly, that all lawmaking and moral line-drawing come from the desire to implement our morality, and that we all have moralities that are ultimately based on unprovable axioms. Therefore, there’s nothing procedurally improper about people with religion-influenced morality engaging in this activity.

I agree with Eugene about this. The separation of church and state doesn’t require the separation of churchmembers and state. I would go on to say that many religious moral ideas are superior to many secular moral ideas. Most religions are informed by centuries of moral debate and reasoning, and they continue to improve.

However, I think he might go a bit too far when he says things like:

Those of us (like me) who draw secular lines shouldn’t feel superior to those who draw religious lines here…

This seems to approach the idea that all paths to moral ideas are equivalent. I don’t think they are.

I do think that there are better ways to approach moral truths than to assume the truth of scripture. If you don’t want to spend much time thinking about morality yourself, then perhaps adopting the doctrine of a major religion or a well-respected moral philosopher might be a decent way to go. But, if you really care about understanding and acting upon moral truths (or at least the best moral ideas yet discovered), you should want to choose the best method available, and I think that’s a secular one.

I don’t think Eugene uses secular moral reasoning because he flipped a coin one day and Secular beat Religion. He does it, I’m guessing, because he made a conscious, informed, judgment that religious moral philosophy is sub-optimal in some important respects. It’s better to choose a method that is rational, open to criticism and improvements through argument. As I said, most religions today have some of this, but they are also burdened by lots of doctrine that doesn’t tolerate or stand up to argument very well, and is thus handicapped as a method of approaching the truth.

So, while it’s true that it’s not outrageous or procedurally inappropriate to want your moral views to inform policy even if they’re based on religious belief…that doesn’t imply that there isn’t a better way, or that we shouldn’t prefer that our president would use it.

I’m not sure what to make of this story of the House defying Bush’s policy on federal embryonic stem cell research funding.

On one hand, I think it’s a good thing that there are many Republicans willing to take a stand for a secular, rather than religious, approach to policy.

On the other hand, I oppose federal funding for all non-defense research. I think that promising research is likely to get private funding (as we have seen with embryonic stem cell research itself). So, I actually don’t approve of this change in policy for fiscal and moral reasons (protecting property, not embryos).

Symbolically, though, I think it would be a shame for Bush to use his first veto for this cause, rather than something more worthwhile (like the bloated Highway Bill, for example).

Go read Radley Balko’s letter to The CEO of Target about its merchandising of clothing that seems to glorify “Soviet chic”.

I think Balko’s analogy to Nazism is apt. It’s not about left vs. right, it’s about totalitarian collectivism vs. individual liberty.

And, like Balko, I’m not talking about censorship. I’m talking about declining to support the obscuring of crucially important historical lessons. Communism wasn’t a noble experiment that went slightly wrong for obscure technical reasons. It was a horrible effort to crush individual wills (and lives) to support the whims of those who spoke for the collective. It was never noble.

And, I’m not opposed to joking about anything. If the Soviet chic clothing is a joke, I think it fails to convey the nature of the joke and merely helps to promote ignorance.

Anybody who thinks that the Soviet Union was a joke should visit Bryan Caplan’s Museum of Communism.

UPDATE: Apparently, Target will no longer stock the stuff because it isn’t selling. Cool.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.

I’m in the process of transitioning from one job to another, so I’ve been a bit distracted lately.

Hopefully, I’ll have new things to post about soon.

In the meantime, you might want to check out security expert Bruce Schneier’s post about the just-passed Real ID Act. I don’t think that many serious people think that it’s a cost-effective security measure (particularly against determined terrorists), but it’s a bone for the anti-immigration crowd. What a shame.

I think that Eugene Volokh has nailed the problem with Michelle Malkin’s criticism of Laura Bush’s speech: She doesn’t make the right distinctions.

But, if you read all of Malkin’s article, you’ll also find criticism of South Park. Malkin admits to not being a fan of the show, so it’s difficult to say if she’s watched enough of it to get a good sense of what it’s about.

She complains:

I find that the characters’ foul language overwhelms any entertainment I might otherwise derive from the show’s occasional , right-leaning iconoclastic themes.

I think that if this is true (and I have my doubts), Malkin has a serious psychological handicap that she should try to overcome. She puts form over substance, and is compelled to apply prejudice where she should exercise judgment.

The simple-minded application of rigid rules does not indicate sophistication or admirable good taste. It blocks thought. This is not a good thing.

I think that South Park makes excellent use of foul language. I think that the vulgarity serves the purpose of helping the open-minded viewers get past stale conventions and focus on the situations and ideas of the show. People who can’t enjoy the journey with the kids because of language hang-ups are missing a lot, and they will find it difficult to appreciate many things in life outside of South Park, as well.

Many conservatives have too narrow a conception of what is appropriate behavior. Etiquette can be useful, but not all of life has to be treated as a formal tea-party. It’s good to be able to tolerate (and command) a wide range of expression.

I’ve blogged about this before, but I thought I should link to Radley Balko on the obesity issue again. This time he responds to a post by Mark Kleiman with some “Simple Truths” about obesity (many of which are neither simple nor true). [To be fair: it was Balko, not Kleiman, who called them “Simple”.]

Radley has been doing a great job debunking many nanny-state policy prescriptions in general, and obesity-related ones in particular.

Here’s his concluding paragraph:

Kleiman also neglects the most important point in this debate: What we eat is just about the most intimate, private decision we make. If that becomes cause for government meddling, it’s difficult to conceive of what’s left that wouldn’t be. I’d also guess that most people know by now that a greasy cheeseburger or gooey donut is bad for them. Yet they still eat them. Perhaps they’ve concluded that the enjoyment they get from good-tasting food is worth the added risk to their health, or a few extra months in the nursing home. I guess the fundamental question, then, is does a free society let people make that decision on their own, or does it implement tax, regulatory, and other punitive measures aimed at making that decision for them?