1. "Freedom's pecking order -- how the states stack up"My state of NJ? #49. Unfortunately not surprising.
Representative Sample: "the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres."
2. "Intellectually Incurious" Obama = Bush in certain ways.
Representative Sample: What all of these things add up to is a picture of a president who is essentially uninterested in military policy, or foreign policy, or, really, economic policy, and who in effect simply ignores them to the extent he is able, and delegates their operation to his subordinates.
3. "This is your brain on Obama" Graphic representation of typical liberal Democrat's brain. Someone on the left should do one of these for conservative Republicans.
4. "A Look at Liberal Christianity" One thing we atheists can agree on with fundamentalists is that Liberal Christianity is pretty pointless.
Representative Sample: I don’t know which parts of the theory he wants to keep and which parts he wants to discard, nor do I know why he wants only bits and pieces of the theory rather than the whole.
5. "Notes from Chairman Lenin—and Dostoevsky" Words to think about.
Representative Sample: The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
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The "Freedom pecking order" considers social freedom to consist of the right to own a gun and home school one's children, but not of the right to an abortion, the right to marry the partner you love, or the right not to be deported or executed just because you can't afford a good lawyer. I suspect that if those rights had been incorporated into the index, New Jersey would've done better.
ReplyDeleteYou might want to actually look at the study. It concerns way more factors than you mentioned. And it does in fact consider marriage/civil union laws. It's basically looking at things from a libertarian perspective. They explain why they didn't use abortion as one of the criteria.
ReplyDeleteI was born in NJ and have lived here 27 of my 45 years, and I've never heard anyone here who thinks it has an unintrusive government. It's pretty much the opposite of freedom.
It considers homeschooling to be the most important factor, followed by gun control. There's no good explanation why - on the contrary, mainstream political theory seems to ignore those questions. By and large, political theorists follow Rawls, not Nozick. They don't think the right of a Southern revanchist or survivalist to own guns and give his children creationist education amounts to much; they're far more concerned with the right of someone to go to school in a first place even if he can't afford it. The main minority view is not even libertarian, but feminist, and at times post-colonialist: it will focus on issues of equal rights and equal access.
ReplyDeleteUnintrusive government doesn't equal freedom. Hong Kong's government is completely laissez faire, except on matters of land use. Because that involves levels of inequality that just aren't acceptable, the vast majority of the population is disenfranchised; only the rich have full voting rights, ensuring the system remains in place. Singapore, which is also quite unintrusive, similarly needs to rig elections, censor films, and prohibit opposition media. Nonetheless, libertarian and conservative organizations express open admiration for both countries, in as nauseating a manner as socialists who express admiration for Cuba.
A good example of what people who aren't libertarian ideologues look at is a study I read a few years ago, comparing levels of freedom in different countries, classified based on Huntingtonian civilizations. There were three indicators: physical liberty, meaning freedom from purges and arbitrary arrests; political liberty, meaning the right to vote, unionize, and express one's views in public; and gender equality. (Highlights: on gender equality, the West unsurprisingly came first. More surprisingly, Latin America came second. In general, the first two indicators are in close correlations - the main outliers are Singapore and Hong Kong, which have ample physical liberty and little political liberty.)
On another note: the liberal equivalent of the representation of a liberal's brain is "A Day in the Life of Joe Republican."
ReplyDelete"It considers homeschooling to be the most important factor, followed by gun control. There's no good explanation why"
ReplyDeleteI would think it should be kind of obvious. Being able to teach your own children, and having an effective right to self-defense are critical elements of individual freedom.
"ith the right of someone to go to school in a first place even if he can't afford it"
Yeah, and that has nothing to do with freedom, in my opinion. Being able to get assistance is being able to get assistance, not freedom.
"The main minority view is not even libertarian, but feminist, and at times post-colonialist: it will focus on issues of equal rights and equal access."
Not surprisingly, my definition of freedom is much more inline with libertarians.
"Unintrusive government doesn't equal freedom"
It's a huge factor, since it's the government that has the force which deprives people of their personal freedom.
" levels of inequality"
Irrelevant to freedom, unless the inequality is enforced by the government.
"classified based on Huntingtonian civilizations. There were three indicators: physical liberty, meaning freedom from purges and arbitrary arrests; political liberty, meaning the right to vote, unionize, and express one's views in public; and gender equality."
Those are extremely narrow indicators. The libertarian definitions of freedom are much more expansive and relevant to personal freedom in my opinion.