You don’t know me…

Every once and a while I feel the need to correct some wrong assumptions about me among my ever growing readership.

(What are they growing? Considering some of the comments I get, cialis canada medicine I’d say mostly pot.)

First and foremost is the perception that I’m a Conservative.

I’m not.

I consider myself a realistic libertarian. I think taxation is theft, sildenafil illness proper authority is an oxymoron, and government is intrinsically repressive.

On the other hand, I recognize that most people can’t be trusted to live by the Golden Rule unless that rule is forced upon them by the rest of us. (And make no mistake, all government is based on the threat of force.)

Whiel I grudgingly conceed the necessity for some form of government, I think it has very, very few legitimate uses. Ensuring a level playing field? Yes. Redistribution of wealth? No.

I’m fanatically in favor of both freedom of speech AND the right to keep and bear arms. In fact, I think the first can only be ensured by the second.

I think Roe vs. Wade is right up there with Dredd Scott when it comes to bad Supreme Court decisions. (But I don’t want abortion to be illegal. I just want it to be unthinkable.)

I’m an agnostic and evolutionist who thinks people should be able to believe anything they want as long as they don’t try to make me live by their beliefs.

I’m not in favor of the Iraq War, but I think the idea of “cutting and running” is naive and ultimately counterproductive.

In general, here’s a quick list of things my Conservative readers would disagree with me on:

• God
• Evolution
• Drug laws
• Conversion of farmland to McMansions (I hate it)
• Smoking bans (I love them)
• George Bush has been a lousy president

Here’s a quick list of things my Liberal readers would disagree with me on:

• Everything else

When all is said in done, the best description of my attitude on this blog and in my life was probably provided by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s now defunct Spivak and Bice blog, who wrote that I am a:

“blogger who often takes a contrarian view of life and politics”

And who am I to disagree?

8 comments October 1st, 2007

I often call myself a Libertarian

If you want to know what I mean, cialis viagra sale this is a great place to start.

Add comment September 24th, 2007

It’s September 11 and I’m thinking about how the property at Ground Zero…

…was called “too valuable” to be left empty as a memorial for the victims of that day.

I still feel like it’s too valuable to be used as just another expensive New York office building.

It should have been turned into a park.

1 comment September 11th, 2007

If the Constitution’s invisible right to privacy…

…protects a woman’s “right” to an abortion because it’s “her” body, cialis buy buy why doesn’t it protect a prostitute’s right to rent her body for sex?

Or my right to sell my kidney?

Or my right to end my own life?

Seems like an amazingly narrow invisible right to me.

This post inspired by a post at The World According to Nick.

6 comments July 19th, 2007

What inspired your politics?

For me, viagra usa here it was a book I read in college: The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith.

It’s a science fiction dramatization of Henry David Thoreau’s statement: “That government is best which governs not at all.”

I didn’t buy everything Smith had to sell…but I leased most of it with an option to own.

4 comments July 18th, 2007

Sometimes I wish I was religious

That way I could believe that there was a special spot in hell for a man who could smother his own son.

4 comments June 26th, 2007

Health care is not a right

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board thinks health care should be a basic right.

In America, buy cialis capsule rights are traditionally things you already have in a natural state that can’t or should not be taken away: life, case liberty, speech, freedom, self-defense.

But you don’t already HAVE healthcare: you purchase it from people who spent a very long time learning to become medical professionals.

You don’t have a right to other people’s time, talent, and expertise.

What the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is talking about is an entitlement not a right.

I’m willing to discuss the possibility of making universal health care an entitlement for every American.

Unlike the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, I’m not willing to abuse the meaning of the word “right” to try to lend the idea extra credibility.

3 comments May 20th, 2007

Great question:

Aaron at Subject to Change asks:

What should I care about?

I answered there…and so should you, viagra generic pharm but I wanted to expand on my answer here.

What should you care about?

My answer:

You.
(I don’t mean that you should be selfish. But if you don’t take care of your own health, discount viagra education, and spirit, you won’t have the ability to take care of anything else.)

Your family.
(It’s really all you have.)

Your job.
(After family, it’s really the way most of us have the biggest impact on the world.)

Your dreams.
(If you’re not chasing your dreams, you’re just killing time.)

Your community.
(You need a beautiful, fullfilling place to accomplish all of the above.)

Your country.
(In the United States, decisions made in Washington effect all of the above.)

Your world.
(We only get the one, let’s not wear it out.)

In that order.

Add comment May 16th, 2007

Is there any religious belief I’m allowed to call odd?

I know… I know…. religion gets a free pass. People can think the wackiest thing and if it’s part of their religion no one else is supposed to criticize it.

But if I were allowed to question a belief, viagra generic cialis I think I might start with the fact that Mennonites are leaving Missouri because they don’t want their pictures taken for photo I.D.s.

Did God really mean his prohibition against graven images to extend to digital photos that are NOT worshipped?

And for that matter His order was not to MAKE any images. If someone else makes the image isn’t it their sin not yours?

1 comment March 22nd, 2007

I disagree with Owen Robinson

As much as I hate to disagree with fellow blogger Owen Robinson, buy viagra hospital I have to take issue with his recent editorial denouncing smoking bans.

Owen’s entire argument rests on the following paragraph:

Ultimately, discount viagra it comes down to a matter of rights. Rights are based entirely upon the self-evident truth that the individual owns oneself, that the individual is sovereign and has the right to choose to do anything one wishes, so long as one doesn’t deny other individuals the equal right to the same freedom. As such, every human possesses the same rights.

My problem is that the above definition would clearly give me the right to go around shooting people in the head, or raping them, or screaming obscenities in their ears as long as I grant other people the same rights.

The way I define rights would change Owen’s paragraph to:

… that the individual is sovereign and has the right to choose to do anything one wishes, so long as it harms no one but himself and he doesn‚Äôt deny other individuals the equal right to the same freedom.

This is where Owen and I begin to part company. (It’s also worth noting the no other Conservative blogger I know agrees with me on the following point either.)

Smoking in public is a physical harm committed on everyone around you. As such, I have the right to defend myself against that harm. In a lawless society, my right would encompass killing the smoker in self-defense, but because we live in a community of laws it’s preferable that smokers are not allowed to smoke in an enclosed public space near anyone who does not choose to smoke themselves. Thus, I support public smoking bans and disagree with Owen.

(A fellow I otherwise find to be very agreeable.)

By the way, an interesting consequence of my reasoning is that I would also be perfectly satisfied if the law mandated that a restaurant had to be either all-smoking or no-smoking.

6 comments March 21st, 2007