According to Arianna Huffington:
Freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they’re saying and who are not hiding behind anonymity
Is that the sound of Publius turning in their graves?
29 Thursday Aug 2013
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inAccording to Arianna Huffington:
Freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they’re saying and who are not hiding behind anonymity
Is that the sound of Publius turning in their graves?
15 Tuesday Jan 2013
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I don’t really care to defend Mr. Lance Armstrong’s doping scandal, but this news about him being asked to return some taxpayer money his team received hits me as strange, because as I recall, all through the bail-out-USPS buzz last year, the USPS people kept claiming that they never took taxpayer money.
21 Friday Dec 2012
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inRE: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2012/12/14/patrick-lee/say-no-to-physician-assisted-suicide/
According to Lee:
“Morality centrally concerns how our choices bear on the intrinsic goods of human persons—such goods as life and health, knowledge, friendship, and others. We ought to care for every person, and that means helping them to attain or preserve these intrinsic goods. Since these goods are the aspects of persons, to act directly against any of them is to act against the person herself.”
Once the word “OTHERS” has been used to cover “the rest of the intrinsic goods I might have missed”, Lee can no longer reach his conclusion logically by asserting on “ANY of them”. For instance, what about free will? Is it one of the “intrinsic goods of human persons”? If so, helping a dying person implementing her choice by her own free will to kill herself is hardly “to act directly against the person herself.”
19 Wednesday Oct 2011
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Ref: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/11/141246695/clarence-thomas-influence-on-the-court
I can relate to Justice Thomas’ view on racial issues. His attitude is basically that “I don’t want to be treated specially, nor do I need to be,” because special treatment on racial basis is, as Justice Thomas often points out, a stereotypical underestimate on the target group, and is racist to begin with, when the problem domain on which the special treatment is to be applied has nothing to do with race.
I have always thought that the concept of “hate crime” is absurd and really falls into the category of thought crimes. If I were killed, sure, I’d very much like to see justice done on the guy who did it, but only because he murdered me as another fellow human being, not because I am Chinese.
To quote Chief Justice Roberts, in one of the court opinions he authored,
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
And I wholeheartedly agree.
07 Friday Oct 2011
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One popular argument the proponents of ObamaCare like to make is that, considering that auto insurances are mandated in most states, the individual mandate wouldn’t be the first time in the US history a government forces citizens to purchase insurance policies.
Of course the flaws in that analogy have been refuted by many, and I don’t really want to beat the dead horse again here. What actually sends chills up my spine is the very scenario where the auto insurance mandat is cited as a precedent for the individual mandate on medical insurances. I haven’t gone and read the old papers yet but I’m willing to wager that back when the auto insurance mandate was made into law, most people must have thought that it could only be a good thing, being told how it would make sure that an innocent party would not suffer from somebody else being irresponsible. Few people would likely have thought that one day in the near future, another generation, who are used to being forced to purchase insurance policies if they want to drive on public roads, would be subject to another more expansive mandate with the auto insurance mandate being some kind of mental stepping stone.
Furthermore, I’m also willing to wager that, in 30, 50 years, when my daughter or her children have gotten used to the ObamaCare individual mandate, there will be another round of “mandates” or in general government impositions on whatever happen to be deemed as “the good things to have” then. And people would point at the ObamaCare mandate and say “see, it’s just how it has been.”
26 Monday Sep 2011
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Ref: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-kennedy-view-of-wealth/
As David Boaz points out in the essay above, Ms. Townsend’s premise, that the wealthy are obligated to give more back because they (somehow) have been given more, is obviously flawed, because not every wealthy person inherited their money as Ms. Townsend did. Indeed for every Kathleen Townsend there is a Warren Buffett, and then some.
Further more, I do not think that even Ms. Townsend’s wealth was “given” to her, at least not in the sense that would obligate her to “give back” more. She inherited her wealth from her ancestors, who earned it fair and square. I know the “fair and square” part is an assumption, but it is one that can be taken in general as long as we assume that most people make honest livings.
Once we start looking at the issue from the wealth’s standpoint instead of its master’s, we start realize that a change of masters does not change the fact that the wealth has been earned fair and square. Thus Ms. Townsend is merely enjoying the remnants of her ancestors earnings, in other words, the remnants of what the society has already decided to be a fair share of compensation for what her ancestors contributed to the society. So if Ms. Townsend decides to give some of it back, that’d be very generous of her, and should she happen to feel otherwise, I for one wouldn’t cast a stone.
24 Wednesday Aug 2011
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inRef: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-debt-ceiling-crisis-america-at-its-worst-2011-7
Out of the entire article above, the one phrase that enrages me the most (other than the endless string of parentheses and SHOUTING CAPITALS OF COURSE) is “this traditionally non-contentious process”, by which the author refers to budget/debt ceiling legislation.
I mean, has the American public education system failed so miserably as to have produced a whole generation of “citizens” who would not even contend how their government is collecting and using their money? When you send your car to a shop for services, wouldn’t you at least take a look at the bill and question what exactly that repair that you are paying hundreds of dollars for is about? How come, when it’s the government and trillions of dollars, it suddenly becomes “non-contentious”?
Or maybe, we are where we are today, precisely because there have been too many Americans who are just like the author and think that it should be “traditionally non-contentious” to just blindly let the government tax and spend.
20 Saturday Aug 2011
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This should be interesting: Rearguing Texas v. White.
I agree with some of the commenters. It is almost pointless to debate whether secession is constitutional. The right to secede is by nature revolutionary and extra-constitutional.