Stop Saying “Drug Violence”
Drug Policy, Police Statism, Political Correctness, Victimless CrimesStop Saying “Drug Violence” Read Post »
Hugh LaFollette, “Licensing Parents Revisited,” Journal of Applied Philosophy.1
The premise of his article is that the legitimacy of professional licensing is well-established and the practice should be expanded to parents.
While one could argue that it doesn’t follow from professional licensing being applied to various professions that it should be expanded to parents, this article is really illustrative of why libertarians should oppose professional licensure outright.
It’s a slippery slope from licensing florists to licensing parents, be it for procreation or raising children after the fact.2 Once you concede the legitimacy of some licensing, then more outrageous nonsense inevitably follows.
Anytime you see the words “applied philosophy” or “applied ethics” together and the article isn’t written by a libertarian, it is safe to assume it contains some nonsense like environmental socialism, Big Brother or nanny statist stuff like this or national health care or other social-welfare programs, calls for government to make businesses more socially responsible, and so on. ↩
No offense, my home state of Louisiana. Why we need to be protected from bad floral arrangements is beyond me. What professional licensing is really about is restricting competition in order to protect existing players in the market; which, not incidentally, is what the state-granted monopoly privilege called intellectual property is about too. Licensing procreation will effectively be a eugenics program. And requiring a license to parent will amount to a massive social engineering project controlled by the politically-connected few. ↩
Should Parents Need a License to Procreate? A Moron Says Yes. Read Post »
The brutality exhibited by the police in this video is so unwarranted, so vicious, and so totally despicable, that not even the usual “defend-the-police-no-matter-what” automatons are putting up a fight in the comments section. Of course, the “Safety Manager” maintains that the fine officer who obviously assaults a man for absolutely nothing, deserves to keep his job.
Before the video was discovered, the police officer simply made up a story that the assaulted bystander was trying to strike the police officer. The DPD, however, believes that police who lie and attack the public unprovoked should be kept on the force. Your tax dollars at work.
Note also how the video camera, being operated by a police force employee, immediately pans away from the action after it becomes apparent that excessive force is being used.
Denver police officer assaults man for talking on phone Read Post »
On August 9, 2010 President Obama came to the University of Texas at Austin to give a talk on the future of higher education. But while he and his adoring public had their little state-worship service in Gregory Gym, protesters outside had quite a time trying to deal with the restrictions put upon their freedom of speech.
…
Demonstration Report from UT-Austin on August 9, 2010Read More »
Demonstration Report from UT-Austin on August 9, 2010 Read Post »
Ronald Bailey, over at Hit & Run, asks, “Should a person who is dying of an incurable illness be allowed to donate his organs before the disease kills him?” This strikes me as a very odd question to ask, especially given who is doing the asking. Hit & Run is the blog for Reason Magazine, a publication I have been led to believe has some libertarian bent. Yet, oddly, it seems they are still mulling over the most fundamental principle of libertarianism: self-ownership.
Once it is recognized that the fellow from the story, Gary Phebus, is a self-owner, the answer to Bailey’s initial question becomes blindingly obvious – a resounding yes. What would it mean to be a self-owner but be unable to use one’s body and its parts as one wished? Surely, any libertarian must recognize the right to commit suicide and the right to donate one’s organs after death, which is all this amounts to. Why the struggle?
…
Back to Basics: Self-Ownership and Organ DonationsRead More »
Back to Basics: Self-Ownership and Organ Donations Read Post »