Recent Comments

1. about 9 hours ago on Prickly City

   You would be more impressed by Nozick if you read anything by him. Your forget, conservatives are not cultists; we embrace ideas. Accordingly, Nozick with those ideas would have been just as brilliant if he were a refuse collector.

2. about 9 hours ago on Prickly City

   The were about as successful as Lenin/Stalin, but without all of the killing that is always an element of socialism.

3. about 9 hours ago on Prickly City

   Pretty sure the peoples of the former Hong Kong and the other countries on my list broadly disagree with your definition of libertarian but are proud of theirs. If the US had a set of laws mirroring any of those, I would regard this as a libertarian paradise.

   We could also agree that North Korea is socialist. Top-down, one-size-fits-all policies.

4. about 9 hours ago on Prickly City

   Thanks, that sounds completely reasonable. I remembered some of the story as it got discussion in WSJ, but I knew there was much I did not know.

5. about 12 hours ago on Prickly City

   Are you one of those who thinks Wuhan is a race? Thought everyone knew it was city. Citing the Contagion that originated in Wuhan by the name “Wuhan Contagion” is mere science. Surely you are not a science denier?

6. about 12 hours ago on Prickly City

   Your argument on taxes fails the smell test, however. The fastest growing states are all low income tax states that also happen to have lesser regulatory burdens. The principle error leftists make in analyzing government burdens is that they stop at “taxes.” California and New York and New Jersey are driving their best businesses to relocate to Texas and Florida and Tennessee. Certainly the recipient states’s 0% state income tax is a factor, and the open shop employment laws are a factor, but the general business environment is more welcoming for all comers, both start ups and relocating companies. It matters.

7. about 12 hours ago on Prickly City

   Your sound like you are reciting the Newsweek version of the problem with Kansas. The whole problem was the divide within the republican party there, which is about evenly divided between conservatives and moderates. The moderate republicans stayed at home in 2018, allowing election of a democrat. We see a similar theme playing out among national democrats.

8. about 12 hours ago on Prickly City

   Governments with libertarian principles: Hong Kong until last week. Still there: Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Ireland.

   https://www.heritage.org/index/

9. about 12 hours ago on Prickly City

   Nozick explains “how a libertarian government would avoid collapsing into anarchy or conquered by authoritarians.” More to the point his explanation for the origins of government fit the libertarian mold, suggesting that the errors we all see arise from the deviation from the original purpose.

10. about 14 hours ago on Prickly City

    The flaw in your argument is explained by Dan Henninger in today’s WSJ:

    The reality now in front of us is that people across the U.S. have experienced the coronavirus in very different ways. Notwithstanding the startling headline figure of 1.68 million cases in the U.S. and the awful accounts of Covid-19’s potential damage to internal organs, a great many Americans have had no significant personal experience with the virus.

    The disparate realities are a lot like the way we experience politics. ….

    The one Covid datum that moves people is the chance of dying from it. The overwhelming incidence of Covid deaths has occurred in about 11 states, with most of them clustered inside those states. Yes, coronavirus is “everywhere,” but it has not been the same experience everywhere. Not even close.

    In New York, total deaths are 29,730. In Missouri, they are 697. For all the attention California and Gov. Gavin Newsom have received, its death rate per 100,000 population is 10, one more than Vermont’s.

    Despite the national media scorn dumped on Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s less restrictive lockdown orders, the fatality rate there is also 10 per 100,000. In Texas it is 5, one ahead of Idaho.

    How is it reasonable to stop people from resocializing given the reality of data where they live and their own experience with the virus?