Disqus - Latest Comments for RobLight

Re: Canadian Freedom

RobLight — Sat, 02 May 2009 14:45:05 -0000

Canada: Average family spends nearly half its income on taxes: “The average Canadian family spends nearly half its total income on taxes, more than it spends on food, clothing, and shelter, according to a new study from independent research organization the Fraser Institute. The Canadian Consumer Tax Index 2009 shows that even though the income of the average Canadian family has increased significantly since 1961, their total tax bill has increased at a much higher rate.”

Read the rest here: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/newsandevents/ne...

Re: Shrum’s Dream of Obama

RobLight — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:53:17 -0000

http://claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1607/a...

Re: The Crisis of Conservative Incoherence

Joe R. — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:49:44 -0000

You're right, they only did that for about six of those years.

Re: Shrum’s Dream of Obama

RobLight — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:07:14 -0000

Highly recommend "Is Health Care a Right?" by Andrew Busch in the current edition of the Claremont Review of Books. Discussion of Rawls to boot.

Re: The Crisis of Conservative Incoherence

RobLight — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:48:24 -0000

"The Donk spent eight years under George Bush getting along by going along, but as polite acquiescence..."

Horseshit on stilts!

Re: Billboard for the People

webgrrl — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 11:12:16 -0000

Robert, how can we hold the Big O responsible for Chris Matthews' skin-crawling public bro-mance? I mean, seriously? The MSM is doing this to themselves.

Re: Billboard for the People

RobLight — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 04:07:43 -0000

No, the critique should be on Obama for the creepy man-worship- more so on him than on his supporters. It's not enough to excuse Obama for being a politician. He's actively cultivated this man-worship. His victory speech was an Exhibit A manifestation of this. Evan Thomas got at this very point -- on Obama's cultivation of a "creepy cult of personality" -- a stunning admission, on the Charlie Rose. See here: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-balan/2008...

Re: Billboard for the People

John V — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:48:44 -0000

Robert,

I agree with Will's sentiments that such man-worship is rather creepy. The critique, as I understand it, is not really on Obama but rather his supporters.

Re: Billboard for the People

RobLight — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:34:54 -0000

"[Obama] is a man of remarkable competence . . . He’s just the kind of guy I’d want as an executive, were I filling an executive position." -Will Wilkinson, Sept 16, 2008

"And I think American voters picked a competent, decent, and sober executive officer." -Will Wilkinson, Nov 5, 2008.

If both these things are true/accurate, what really have we to fear?

And to your statement, also from Nov 5: "McCain’s even worse with the 'fight cynicism through glorious collective commitment' crap, which is one reason I’m glad he lost". What's ascribable here to McCain -- and indeed it is, and it's loathsome -- then it's twofold ascribable to Obama.

Re: Winston and Coolidge on the Bailout

RobLight — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 23:52:18 -0000

Actually (sorry to be responding so late...better late than never, I guess!) the fact that a bunch of progressive, left-leaning historians savaged Silver's book only rather proves Silver's point.

Yes, I know well that a defense of natural rights is not going to impress Will- because I've already been through this before, years ago, on this very blog. Actually, my mentioning of Coolidge's staunch defense of the natural rights understanding of the Constitutional framework was actually meant as a sort of tongue in cheek statement meant to perhaps cause Will a bit of cog diss., since he seems to think that anyone defending natural rights is a rube (and if Coolidge isn't a rube for Will, this then means that Will's notion of morality is historicist. I'm not saying historicism is "wrong" per se...I do actually happen to think it a way of thinking about morality [even if Will doesn't call it by the name historicis] that's far deeper than, say, standard issue positivism).

Re: More on Voting Well

RobLight — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 04:21:35 -0000

Canada may be a bit more economically free than the U.S., but it hardly bodes well for the long-term well-being of a society that can engage in such Orwellian prosecution of free speech as exampled by the recent case of Mark Steyn. To wit, Steven Pinker, Canadian, had the following interesting things to say of the Steyn case (via The Corner):

Words and Rules [Mark Steyn]
Professor Steven Pinker of Harvard University was asked about my recent travails with Canada's hydra-headed "human rights" monster and gave a splendidly straightforward response:

I was aware of the Steyn/Maclean's case.

It’s truly shocking that a supposedly democratic government has arrogated to itself the power to censor speech because some judge or bureaucrat thinks it may “expose a person to contempt.” This could outlaw any criticism of a practice that is statistically more common in some groups than others, such as slavery, polygamy, child abuse, ritual torture, gay-bashing, and so on.

It allows haters to decide who gets to say what — all they have to do is say, “So-and-so’s essay made me show contempt,” and So-and-so gets fined or jailed. And it opens the door to the government banning speech that upsets anyone, anywhere — as all-important speech is bound to do.

This is an atrocity against the ideal of free speech, and will make Canada a laughing stock among lovers of democracy and enlightenment.

Well said. I wish Canadian politicians and even my fellow media hacks up north got it as clearly as Prof Pinker does.

Re: Veep Liveblog

RobLight — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 00:48:17 -0000

Very amusing.

I refused to watch the debate, and I'm taking this to be more informative.

Re: Winston and Coolidge on the Bailout

rsporter — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:37:13 -0000

Silver's book was savaged pretty badly by historians. Coolridge might have been good, but Silver didn't prove it. It seems the reason most libertarians latch on to Coolridge is because he didn't do anything. The question should then be, did Coolridge actively attempt to right the wrongs, or did he just not accomplish anything.

Also, I'm not sure that a defense of natural rights is going to impress Will.

Re: Winston and Coolidge on the Bailout

RobLight — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:21:58 -0000

You should read Coolidge vs. the Historians by Tom Silver*. What's admirable about Coolidge finds its source in the fact that he took the Founding, the Declaration, and natural rights seriously.

* http://www.claremont.org/publications/precepts/...

Re: Meet Winston

RobLight — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:48:31 -0000

Is Winston secretly a conservative?! A fine conservative name after all !

Re: Qualifications and Sarah Palin’s Crazy Politics

RobLight — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:29:27 -0000

Micha- thanks for your reply. In the strict sense, yeah, you're correct. Obama and McCain share a common starting point in that they are both progressives (John McCain's hero after all is TR). Like all progressives, whether they're actually aware of it consciously or not, they deny that human beings qua human beings actually own themselves and thus deny, in any real sense, any true ownership in property. The policy upshot is that whatever rights we have are not inalienable; whatever government gives, government can just as easily take away. (A subject I know is dear to Will's heart, which he puts down as a curious chestnut of mine -- my "plucking of the one-string" as I recall). This is another way of saying that rights cease to be natural and become socialized. This is how Leftists and not a few libertarians essentially view rights.

Be that as it may, McCain's "soul" and disposition is of a conservative sort -- despite how "ungrounded" it may be in many respects -- and so I'm quite confident he'd be far more chary than, say, Obama, in how far he's willing to push that socialization of rights (confiscatory levels of taxation; appointing jurists who would further implement international law into the Constitution; the withering away of our national sovereignty, etc.). But, yes, I think you're right in principle -- there's no formal reason why McCain can't go whole-hog and be as much of a profligate, reckless jackass as Obama and his assorted pseudo-Marxist phucks.

Re: I Heart Adam Smith

RobLight — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:32:50 -0000

TMS is a book that's always intrigued me, but never got around to reading it. Your post has provoked me to dig into it - soon.

Re: Today in Backwardsville

RobLight — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:28:03 -0000

"That the minimum wage is some kind of free lunch is an item of faith for people who don't care enough about poverty to actually think about what helps poor people. "

"If this is libertarian faith, then libertarian faith is just the same thing as giving a shit and knowing what you're talking about. So, yes, the law of demand is God. Defy it and it will smite you."

Bartlett's-worthy! I love it when Will gets political about something (and I mean by "political" in a very specific/"philosophic" sense, having something to do w/...thumos...).

Re: Shrinking

RobLight — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:02:28 -0000

To expand on my previous comments re. KH's article, I think neither of you are making the precise distinction between nature and culture (convention), the former being necessary for understanding the latter. For instance, I can say I don't wear a powdered wig and stockings like George Washington, but I adhere to his view of natural right. Or take the phenomenon of men wearing earrings. While the initial turn to earrings some years ago appeared to coincide with a certain effeminacy of contemporary men, which it does to a large extent, there nevertheless are distinct sex roles evident in the now-established conventions for wearing earrings. For example, you rarely if ever see men wearing hoop earrings; there is generally a man's way to wear earrings and a woman's way. In other words, culture tends to follow nature, even though absurdities abound, toward both license and oppression, which are to be expected since culture as such is merely a manifestation of man's freedom. More generally, this topic reflects what Aristotle means when he says in the Ethics that natural right has the same power everywhere but is everywhere changeable. Nature is completed by freedom, but nevertheless guides freedom. KH and you are right to the extent that some conservatives (paleocons, by and large) adhere to cultural stasis, but you're perhaps insufficiently aware of the extent to which your embrace of cultural change is merely the obverse of that conservatism.

Re: I Am a Howleyite, or Osama bin Laden Is Right

RobLight — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 05:39:20 -0000

What K.H. doesn't "get" is that she's taking for granted a cultural standard (albeit infinitely malleable) and assuming that people will assimilate to it. But the question is - given her own presumptions which seem to be "value free" - why assimilate? Indeed, funny enough,that's precisely what a good many, I'd say most (particularly Hispanic), immigrants conclude...something that's particularly reinforced and trickled down to them via the multicultural indoctrination promulgated by the universities and educational establishment...and why you have, quite the contrary to what K.H. asserts, the existence of rather profuse multi-generational non-assimilation amongst Hispanics in this country.