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.
Continue reading "From Nudge To Shove" »
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.
Continue reading "Guns vs. Terror" »
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.
Continue reading "Save Our Souls" »
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.
Continue reading "Liberties going up in smoke" »