April 2007
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Government is force. What Really Limits Government? Force limits government. First, government is limited by the force it has at its disposal. A government whose agents are armed only with truncheons is far more limited than a government whose agents are armed with machine guns, tear gas, and the hydrogen bomb. Second, government is limited…
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Snow’s melting up there. Grab the rifles, good buddy. It’s past time we went.
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Now though daffodils, My little dachshund slaloms, His tags expired.
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Spring is here, you say? Sit down on the curb for me. Let’s see that ID.
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The day smells alive. The fruit trees are budding green. Tax season is here!
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This is the sixth entry in my Antistatism Series. The last two posts in this series, “Practicability,” and “Heaven, Hell, or Hades?,” showed that Ayn Rand’s politics is incomplete because it provides no sufficiently realized account of limited government’s practicability. Objectivism states that a government of delegated and enumerated powers, limited to the purpose of…
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For a long time I had a banner on the Agonblog’s header with three graphics running across. The third graphic was a snippet of a title page for an art song: Franz Schubert’s “Seligkeit.” (In English: “Bliss” or “Blessedness.”) How dearly, dearly I love this song. Its first two verses wistfully contemplate the joys of…
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This is the fifth entry in my Antistatism Series. The more I study the Enlightenment, the more astounded I am at the depth and breadth of its contours, and at boldness of its heroes as they sought to shape the West to their new vision. One contour that I think Objectivists admire too distantly was…
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This is the fourth entry in my Antistatism Series. Here my argument begins in earnest. We shall see that Ayn Rand tacitly admits that an account of the practicability of government is a necessary component of any political philosophy — and then proceeds to not provide one. Objectivism has disturbingly little to say about what…