blog.kennypearce.net

Dropping My Tagline

For several years, this blog has been labeled with the tagline "The Evangelical libertarian philosopher." For some time now, I've been dissatisfied with this label, both as a description of my views and as a description of what this blog is about. I've hesitated to drop it primarily because I think that blogs of non-famous people, such as myself, should have some kind of descriptive name or tagline rather than just the author's name, and I couldn't think of another short, catchy, descriptive phrase that would nicely fill that bit of screen space. (I toyed with: "Berkeley's metaphysics, Nozick's politics,...
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John Locke, Ron Paul, and Airport Security

It has been rather a long time since I wrote on politics. As you can probably imagine, I'm pretty worked up about this whole body scanner business. As recently announced in a post on Homeland Stupidity, Ron Paul and two co-sponsors have introduced a bill in the House which would remove immunity from airport screeners and other federal employees who engage in certain sorts of behavior associated with airport screening. That is, it ensures that the screeners at airports are subject to the same laws regarding battery, sexual assault, child pornography, etc., as everyone else. I think there is something...
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R.I.P. Lex Americanorum (Sept. 17 , 1787 - July 9, 2008)

Lex Americanorum, the King of America, passed away this afternoon on the Senate floor. Lex had been ill for some years and White House-ologists in Moscow have long suspected that one or more cabinet members had in fact taken responsibility for most major decisions. The exact identity of this person had not been firmly established, but most experts agree that it is Vice President Dick Cheney. Lex was born on September 17, 1787 and became king shortly thereafter upon election by representatives of the 13 American colonies. Lex was able to survive and maintain power for nearly 221 years...
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A Hesitant Re-Endorsement of Ron Paul

After Ron Paul's response to racism charges and my analysis of the situation as sleaze rather than racism, I am now prepared to somewhat hesitantly re-endorse Ron Paul for president. There are two reasons for this: process of elimination, and some additional information on the racism charges. First, the process of elimination...
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No Racism, Just Sleazy Politics

Reason is a libertarian magazine of long standing. They now have an article up speculating on the origin of the infamous Ron Paul newsletters. I think Reason's explanation makes a lot of sense of the situation. They note that many veterans of the libertarian movement suspect Lew Rockwell was involved. Though Rockwell denies writing the articles, Reason brings up some interesting points about the history of Rockwell and another individual by the name of Murray Rothbard. The name Jeff Tucker also came up in association with the newsletters. This is the general picture: these people, Rockwell, Rothbard, and Tucker, apparently...
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Ron Paul Responds to Racism Charges on CNN

Ron Paul recently appeared on CNN to address charges of racism. The video is available on YouTube and I recommend that everyone watch it. I still don't think the response is fully adequate, but there are a number of points that I think are important in terms of a total evaluation of the situation:

• Paul explicitly and repeatedly repudiates the views expressed in the newsletters.
• Paul calls Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and Ghandi "heroes" of individual liberty for their use of non-violent civil disobedience to oppose abuse of power by government.
• Paul says the article and its timing were politically motivated...

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Ron Paul and Racism Revisited

Ron Paul did rather poorly in yesterday's New Hampshire primary. He barely matched hist poll results. In Iowa, which is much less fertile ground for Paul and his views, he got nearly double what the polls predicted. The campaign blog blames an article in the New Republic on the newsletters that were published in Paul's name in the '90s containing racist content and the like. The blog links to Paul's issue page against racism and a campaign press release to clarify the campaign's positions on the subject. When I first read the campaign's response, not having seen the New Republic article...
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Ron Paul Moves to Save Liberty Dollar (Sort of)

So, I've been rather busy and slow in covering recent developments related to federal government action against the Liberty Dollar. Some of you may have seen news coverage related to the seizure of the Liberty Dollar organization's assets. The news media mostly focused on the fact that the raid occurred when the office was full of Ron Paul dollars. The media coverage was pretty incomplete. Here is a more complete timeline of what has occurred to date: 1998 NORFED (the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and the IRS) is founded, and begins offering "liberty dollars", a...
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Cincinnatus for President!

An op-ed in today's New York Times bemoans the fact that none of the leading presidential candidates read Latin. (Well, Giuliani apparently studied it briefly in his Catholic high school.) In all of US history, there have only been 9 presidents who have not studied Latin. Apparently James Garfield even taught both Greek and Latin at the college level before becoming president. Even George W. Bush has a moderately extensive background in Latin. This marks a shift not only in our education system, but in our political system: whereas it was once the case that many (at the beginning of US history, all) of our politicians...
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Is Ron Paul a Racist?

I have said before that while I am not without reservations about Ron Paul, I think that he is far and away the best candidate to enter the race so far. What was previously my principle reservation has, in fact, been answered by the campaign. This letter to the editor of the National Review, written by Ron Paul's communications director, Jesse Benton, is the second source I have seen that answered my concern directly...
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Ron Paul and the Rule of Law

A little while back I made a passing remark to the effect that it would be a good thing (as well as a miracle) if Ron Paul was elected president. However, a recent discussion at Parableman will have me looking more critically at what Ron Paul has to say over the months until the primary, as well as re-evaluating some of my own views. Now, despite what Jeremy says, I'm not convinced that Ron Paul is a "strict libertarian" - my understanding is that he is not a proper libertarian at all ... but, rather, that he is a radical federalist...
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