Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness

Racism - Not always black & white!

by Reena Kapoor

Apparently women of color are immune to allegations of racism.  Stupid me for not knowing this after having suffered through "diversity" training at some of the leading coprorations of this country.  I don't know about you but that does not make me feel warm & fuzzy about the choice of Sotomayor as nominee for the supreme court! I don't know how competent this Latina is but she sure scares me with her glib attitude and penchant for judicial activism, NOT to mention her racist remarks. Yes, read this:

Yet speaking at Berkeley's Law School in 2001, Sotomayor asserted that "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would \[as judge\] more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." 

If you don't think that's racist, make her a white male in your mind and change the "Latina woman" to "White male" and vice-versa and see what you think.

Libertarian Blogs & WebSites

by Reena Kapoor

Don't know how good this source is since I don't know many of these sites and blogs but this list claims to list the Top 100 Libertarian Blogs...

Happy reading!

"How We Got Into This Frackin' Mess" Chart

by Anurag Wadehra

Stephen Hicks has a conceptually elegant but simple chart explaining the pathologies of a mixed economy - when free market is "mixed" with government intervention. For fancier titles of the chart, Dr. Hicks suggests...

Academic title: “The Sociology of Dysfunctional Nonstandard Political-Economic Systems.”

Public Intellectual title: “The Evolution of the Mixed Economy.”

I wonder if there is a similar attempt by the Socialists to explain their worldview. At least their arguments - good, bad and ugly - could be laid bare.

Self Ownership - A Novel Idea?

by Anisha Kahai

Why is the simple philosophy of Liberty so hard for so many people to get? Isn't it the most natural, logical way to think? Here is an elegant attempt at making these ideas accessible.

Mill's Perspicuous Perspective

by Rakinder Grover

I found a great quote from John Stuart Mill in a comment by Ray Mangum on Roderick Long's blog, the Austro-Athenian Empire:

“The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people; and the spirit of liberty, in so far as it resists such attempts, may ally itself locally and temporarily with the opponents of improvement; but the only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty, since by it there are as many possible independent centres of improvement as there are individuals.”

From Nudge To Shove

by Anurag Wadehra

As a pivotal year comes to a close, there is little doubt that the government power is on the rise in human affairs. Most people, certainly in popular media, are clamoring for it.

Over the summer, there was at least a discourse on the merits of softening the punch of government's intrusions. This was triggered by the book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein of University of Chicago, wherein they mated two opposing species of ideas - liberty and paternal authority - to produce an offspring called libertarian paternalism. 

More on guns...in India

by Reena Kapoor

Another interesting take on gun control in India.  I post it because this debate is relatively new to India and its people and it's interesting to see it being discussed now.  Gun laws for ordinary citizens are not being loosened in India anytime soon and as I pointed out below such a loosening would be fraught with problems; but that is no excuse to not revisit these unduly draconian laws for the cause of improved security through civilian resources e.g., registered security guards for hotels, malls, cinemas, etc.

Guns vs. Terror

by Reena Kapoor

Shikha Dalmia of Reason presents an interesting case in WSJ with her article Arming India against Terrorism where she talks about how and why Mumbai a city of 18 million was held hostage for nearly 60 hours by 10 gunmen in the recent attacks. She says that part of the reason terrorists ran free in Mumbai was that no one else was armed properly - not the police, not the private security of the establishments under attack and certainly not the citizenry - thanks to draconian anti-gun laws.  Putting aside for a moment the libertarian stance for gun ownership by all citizens, even anti-gun ideologues should be able to see that victims in this attack would have fared much better if at least private establishments (in this case hotels) had properly armed security guards.

Save Our Souls

by Reena Kapoor

The Republican party is indulging in some much-needed and well-deserved soul searching it seems.  They are looking for ideas to rebuild the party and getting a lot of good feedback, much that I would agree with (not everything).  There is some interesting Libertarian feedback in there that got me interested enough that I did log into the site and voted on many of the issues; perhaps in the vain hope that this party may some day live up to its name and stop trying to infringe upon people's personal and social liberties.

Liberties going up in smoke

by Reena Kapoor

An outrageous ban on smoking in your own apartment -- yes, you heard that right -- by the city of Belmont in the San Francisco Bay Area (where else?) is covered in this segment Just Can't Quit: How far will smoking bans go? by Nick Gillespie of Reason TV.