Dollars and Dimes

Nobody asked but … Down here in Kentucky, the philosophers among us sometimes use the phrase, “why that’s like a doller waiting on a dime!”  This is a colorful restatement of the even older, and folksier, “penny wise and pound foolish.”  So here’s why I am referring to this ancient wisdom (I’m sure there must…

Facts

Nobody asked but … If “might” makes “rights,” then they are “privileges” not “rights.”  This raises the problem that we have no concrete definition of “rights” in a statist context.  I really like Skyler’s idea that might includes reason, which has as much power to create structure as does coercion. I guess I don’t really adhere…

Selfie

Nobody asked but … from my alter ego, Verbal Vol: We can only see what we now see until we devise a way to see something new.  Cartesian physics gave way to Newtonian physics which led to relativity and further to probabilistic ideas from quantum physics.  Butwe will never know if that which is now…

Whadya Know?

Nobody asked but … This past Spring, while I was the organizer of a discussion group on philosophy, a groupmate hit me with a question for which I had an immediate answer.  She asked, cordially and sincerely, “what do you know?”  My fast response was, “very little.”   I have done a great deal of thinking…

Modern Libertarianism

Nobody asked but … I ran across this in Lew’s intro to Murray Rothbard’s For A New Liberty … … modern libertarianism, a political-ideological system that proposes a once-and-for-all escape from the trappings of left and right and their central plans for how state power should be used. Libertarianism is the radical alternative that says…

Islands

Nobody asked but … BI Southeast BI North Prison islands and kidnapper retreat islands excepted, going to an island is supremely voluntaristic.  My wife and I are celebrating Mother’s Day/our 49th Anniversary on Block Island, Rhode Island.  Although the range of freedoms we may take are bounded by the sea (until our return ferry sails…