the lexfiles

Sweet!

The lowest rated player in Madden 2007 gets a little pro-bowl love.

The long snapper position isn't subject to Pro Bowl voting, so the coaching staffs for each team have to select a snapper if there isn't one among the linemen already chosen. Green Bay's staff will coach the NFC, and Packers special teams coordinator Mike Stock held the same position when Albright joined the Redskins in 2001.

"They need a long snapper," Albright said. "Mike Stock is the one who brought me to Washington, and he thought of me."

Same Topic, New Day

Julian defends his Reason article at Notes from the Lounge.

Libertarian Omerta Maybe the most common beef I'm hearing from sane-seeming people is that we shouldn't be talking about this stuff. It reflects badly on libertarianism, and Paul is still great all things considered especially compared with the wretched alternatives.

All other considerations aside, this is just premised on a repulsive conception of how libertarian journalists ought to operate—essentially as though "libertarian" nullifies "journalist" any time we're faced with a choice between reporting facts and cheerleading for our tribe. It's an argument with terrible pedigree, and reminds me more than a bit of an old essay in which Noam Chomsky argues scholars shouldn't write about the Killing Fields in Cambodia, because fighting capitalism was more important than, you know, facts.

But this goes beyond the "libertarian" vs. "journalist" thing.  Non-journalist libertarians should be discussing it too, and cheerleading for our tribe while we're at it.  Too many people subscribe to the view(s) that conservatives are bigots and that libertarians are just conservatives that want to smoke pot and/or fuck liberal chicks.  That the most prominent libertarian candidate in the country today can be tied to bigotry only reinforces that view.

The only possible good that could have come from Ron Paul's candidacy is that it might raise awareness of libertarianism -- he may influence people to embrace a more libertarian view.  That those views will now be associated with bigotry in the minds of some people makes it important that libertarians are out in front pushing this story and making sure that people hear that there are liberal conceptions of libertarianism out there.

More on Ron Paul

There's a good piece up at Reason by Julian Sanchez and David Weigel.

But perhaps the best refutation of the old approach is not the absence of race-baiting rhetoric from its progenitors, but the success of the 2008 Ron Paul phenomenon. The man who was once the Great Paleolibertarian Hope has built a broad base of enthusiastic supporters without resorting to venomous rhetoric or coded racism. He has stuck stubbornly to the issues of sound money, "humble foreign policy," and shrinking the state. He wraps up his speeches with a three-part paean to individualism: "I don't want to run your life," "I don't want to run the economy," and "I don't want to run the world." He talks about the disproportionate effect of the drug war on African-Americans, and appeared at a September 2007 Republican debate on black issues that was boycotted by the then-frontrunners. All this and more have brought him $30 million-plus from more than 100,000 donors; thousands of campaign volunteers; and the largest rallies he's ever spoken to, including a crowd of almost 5,000 in Philadelphia.

It's worth noting that although Ron Paul has stated that he is morally responsibe for the contents of his newsletters, he hasn't done anything to distance himself from the writers.  I doubt that the opinions in his newsletters really reflect his character, but the fact that he allowed those opnions to go out in his name certainly tells you something about him.

...And Speaking of Ron Paul

Via Brink, an interesting article on Ron Paul mentions a libertarian split from way back.

The division between paleolibertarians, centered around the Mises Institute, and cosmopolitan libertarians, centered around Cato, is also a case of "culture clash," according to Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com and prominent member of the Mises set. "There's the populist wing of the libertarian movement, and then there's the Washington crowd that's still trying to sell libertarianism, or their version of it, to elites. These people want to go along and get along. As long as they can abort their babies and sodomize each other and take as many drugs as they want to, they are happy. They don't care who is being killed in Iraq and how many Iraqis are dying. That's their hierarchy of values."

I feel bad for the people who bought into his campaign and supported him whole-heartedly.  Especially since it could have been me -- I had no idea.  I mean, I knew there were cranks that called themselves libertarians, but...

Small government, free market principles appeal to me because the moral case for them is so strong -- would appeal to me even if the free market weren't the best way to "organize" everything economic.

The limited government framework ensures the greatest human liberty.  It provides the best opportunity for each of us to live the sorts of lives we want  and to seek the sorts of experiences we want.

And poor Mises.

And While We Are On The Subject...

Friends expect that, given my classical liberal leanings, I would be a Ron Paul supporter.  And I have been unable to fully articulate why I haven't been.  I mean, he's the libertarian candidate, right?

Ok, so we disagree on the war, and on immigration, and on switching back to the gold standard.  But it's not as if he's going to win.  And support for Dr. Paul at least shows that small government principles have some following.

But you really gotta be careful who you lie down with.

Will Wilkinson's take here.

I had hoped Paul would do more good than harm for libertarianism, inspiring lots of college kids to get interested in the ideas of liberty. But now I’m pretty certain that he’s done a lot of harm, causing many people to associate libertarianism with racist cranks. I think it’s pretty important then to publicize the fact that there are genuinely liberal versions of libertarianism out there. The young people who got interested in libertarian ideas through Paul need to be able to find Cato, Reason, the IHS, and other places where one can learn about classical liberalism, which isn’t about keeping the Mexicans out, deploring the abolition of slavery, or hoarding gold.

Brink Lindsey here.

Speaking of Libertarianism...

Are progressives suitably enarmored of the term "progressive" that we can have "liberal" back.  Pretty please?

Kinsley on Libertarianism

Michael Kinsley has an op-ed in Saturday's Washington Post regarding libertarianism (leave aside for the moment that I'm so done with that label) which isn't all that bad (Ilya Somin has a critique on it here, which discusses some things so I don't have to).

What bothered me, pet-peevishly, is the notion that libertarians are insufficiently respectful of equality:

A similar flaw affects libertarian thinking about government-mandated redistribution. Extreme libertarians believe this is immoral or even unconstitutional, and even more moderate libertarians disapprove of government social welfare programs as an infringement on the freedom of taxpayers. But freedom is only one of the two core values our nation was built on. The other is equality. Defining equality, libertarians tend to take a narrow view, believing that it means only political equality with no financial aspects. Defining freedom, by contrast, they take a broad view, and see a violation in every nickel a citizen must spend.

Libertarians ask: By what justification does the government concern itself with inequality -- financial or otherwise -- in the first place? They are nearly alone in asking this question. Even conservatives claim a great concern for equality of opportunity, while opposing opportunity of result. And the reasons seem obvious: some degree of material equality as a necessary basis for political equality; the huge role of luck in getting each of us to our relative stations in life; etc.

But nothing like this is obvious to libertarians. They force us to think it all through from scratch. Good for them.

I recognize that he has limited space to make his point -- I assume from the fact that this passage appeared at the end of his piece means that he would have elaborated on this were he not tied to a particular word count.  But.

I'm not sure what he means by "political equality".  The libertarian view of equality is only that the government should treat everyone equally (at least, that's the big libertarian "equality" issue that jumps to my mind) -- but that doesn't seem to be what he means.  He could mean that libertarians believe that each person should get a vote; which is true but trivial.  I expect that all members of a liberal society would believe that.

Then he speaks of "financial equality".  I don't mean to be flip, but I'm not sure what that means either.  Is talking about equality of income?  Wealth?  Is he advocating socialism?

He says that "the reasons [for the government concerning itself with inequality -- financial or otherwise] seem obvious: some degree of material equality as a necessary basis for political equality;".

This passage makes me suspect that he says "political equality", he means "possess equal political power", which is, frankly, bizarre.  Is there any degree of material equality that will grant me political equality (in this sense) with a president, or a senator, or even an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post?  I don't think so.

Quotesfile this

Julian Sanchez:

I'm all for division of labor, but do we actually need to outsource the production of uninformed, half-assed thought experiments to opinion writers?

Very Sad News

George MacDonald Faser has passed away.

George MacDonald Fraser, who died on Wednesday aged 82, revived in a long-running series of novels the career of one of fiction’s most infamous characters, Flashman.

[...]

So successfully did Fraser bring off the conceit that some critics, especially in America, believed the memoirs to be authentic. A debate ensued in the New York Times, and Flashman’s concocted curriculum vitae found its way into works of biographical reference.