Government sucks at war, too

Alex Tabarrok has a brilliant pair of posts at Marginal Revolution about the Iraq war as a demonstration of government ineffectiveness. (This morning, Tyler Cowen has a rejoinder.) All wars are full of incompetence, mendacity, fear, and lies. War is big government, authoritarianism, central planning, command and control, and bureaucracy...

August 5, 2006 Author: Matt Barr
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Happily married, or something

The government shouldn't have anything to do with who gets "legally" married and who doesn't in the first place. If it's going to "recognize" (how thoughtful of it) marriage between an adult man and an adult woman it ought to "recognize" a similar arragement between two people of the same...

July 26, 2006 Author: Matt Barr
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Lives, fortunes, and sacred honor

Muffin asked this weekend what the Fourth of July was all about. "We used to be ruled by the King of England," I said. "On July 4th we said we were going to be our own country. It's our country's birthday." "Was the King of England nice?" she asked. "No,...

July 3, 2006 Author: Matt Barr
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There oughtta be a helmet law!

Predictably, Super Bowl winning quarterback Ben Roethlisberger's near-fatal motorcycle accident has inspired calls for helmet laws. The Philadelphia Inquirer agitates today to reinstate Pennsylvania's helmet law, repealed in 2003: Bikers who ride without a helmet often dismiss the risks fatalistically - when your number's up, etc. But advances in trauma...

June 14, 2006 Author: Matt Barr
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When government gives you a culture of corruption, make culture of corruption-ade

The blogosphere is exercised over this newly-discovered "culture of corruption" in government. Clearly, we need to clean house in Washington and elect more people who aren't drunk with power and willing to flout the law to get their way. Right? Not so fast, Mr. Nader. It's not a bug, it's...

May 23, 2006 Author: Matt Barr
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"Help is on the way"

John Samples has an interesting, thorough post on some Pew Research data that has some unexpected news about how widely held (relative to what you'd expect) many ideas about economic and social freedom are. I don't think his conclusion is a home run, though: One-third of Pew’s libertarians are between...

May 18, 2006 Author: Matt Barr
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