Archive for the ‘ Foreign Policy ’ Category

Questions About Going Into Assad’s Syria

Questions About Going Into Assad’s Syria.

[Originally posted at Notes on Liberty]

The question that many of you will assume I am answering was clearly (and emphatically) intended for someone else, so instead of answering it I’ll be making comments that, given the timing and the subject matter, just happen to answer the question anyways. I don’t want to do so directly because I would prefer it if Dr. Delacroix kept pestering Brandon and left me out of it. I do not want to draw his ire. I’m too busy with other things. So, this piece, and it’s similarity to recent pieces by Brandon and Andrew is coincidence and nothing more, I assure you. Just so you are not totally confused by what I am referring to, here is the question (that I remind you I am not specifically or directly answering):

This is for Brandon:

A question: If you were 100% convinced that Assad of Syria had used chemical weapons on civilians, would it affect your judgment about the desirability of American intervention in Syria? Read more

A Conservative

A Conservative.

WHY I AM ONE

The bizarre bohemian bilge that plagues conventionally left-wing schools of thought, whether from Marx or Rawls or Chomsky, is just not for me. For the most part anyways. Since I’ve become more (this is an understatement; I have gone much farther than, say, Glenn Beck) of a libertarian (a classical liberal while socialists are usually just reverse reactionaries), I’ve learned to make some exceptions. This has tended to be more on the level of semi-reluctant tolerance than on that of open-armed embrace. Read more

Humanitarian Wars can be Unjust too

Humanitarian Wars can be Unjust too.

[Originally posted at Notes on Liberty]

If you hate evils committed by individuals as much as you hates evils committed by institutions, and vice versa, as I think most people who are even remotely libertarian — wait, no! remotely human! — do, does it truly follow that you must condone one in order to combat the other? Maybe it does, at least in the short term, in a place and time where relationships between all these things have been so distorted. In this case, the distortion is caused primarily by the monopolization of not only judicious force, but very nearly all force, initiative and responsive, at every level, by a single institution (with many manifestations and interlocking jurisdictions). If you haven’t guessed already, that institution is the state. Read more

Rand Paul Filibuster was Succesful on its Own Terms

Rand Paul Filibuster was Succesful on its Own Terms.

Howdy! I have been meaning to blog about Ron and Rand Paul for sometime now.

On Ron I wanted to go into his “offensive” twitter comment about serial kil…ah…er…SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, as well as the RonPaul.com controversy. I wrote a post about the first one but it lead me down a different path that involved writing nine, yes, NINE, other posts. And on the trademark dispute I barely even got started before those other projects consumed my time. Now these are stale issues and it may not even be worth posting on them, though I will be looking for an opportunity to do so, either with new developments that arise in those cases, or separate issues that I can cleverly tie into. We’ll see. Read more

Hating Energy Dependence, Not Loving Energy Independence

Hating Energy Dependence, Not Loving Energy Independence.

I worked on this piece on and off from November 30th to January 21st. I wrote the bulk of it on the first day, and most of the editing since then had been cosmetic. It is somewhat related to a project I was helping a friend with, although that is not the reason I wrote it. This piece originally appeared on January 21st at Notes on Liberty, where it was my first for that blog.

WHAT’S SO BAD ABOUT ENERGY DEPENDENCE?

Contrary to what one might be led to think, energy independence need not be the opposite of energy (inter)dependence. Likewise, contrary to what many advocates of free markets and free trade will say, energy dependence (perhaps not their choice of words), is not a good thing. Energy interdependence certainly can be a good thing, but in today’s world I can’t agree that every instance of it always is. Read more

One Year Later at PTPOL

One Year Later at PTPOL.

Well, this blog has been registered at WordPress.com for one year now. It took a while to get it off the ground, but it hit the ground running. (How’s that for a mixed – and contradictory – metaphor, by the way?) Click here to learn more about the blog, and here to learn a little bit about it’s author.

140 posts, 6,602 views, 482 comments, 200 WordPress likes, 192 Facebook likes, 54 followers on WordPress, 1150 followers on Twitter.

Not bad for an amateur one-man team, right? Well, its the readers that are more to thank. Without them there really is no point in writing.

Read more

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