Comments on: Which side is intrusive?

By: ScurvyOaks

ScurvyOaks — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:40:23 +0000

As the guy who complains the most about smoking bans, I’ll crash your party and bring the cigars. Centinel, you sound a lot like that wonderful product of the Reformation, John Milton:

“And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil. As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian. I can not praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”

Areopagitica (1644), still the most eloquent defense of freedom of publication.

By: Flambeaux

Flambeaux — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:10:50 +0000

Fireduck,

On this we do not disagree. Who’s bringing cigars?

By: Fireduck

Fireduck — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:03:54 +0000

Flambeaux – although I agree, I think that single malt Scotch is even better proof. Or a nice Bourbon. You know, with the little pewter horse on the cork?

By: Flambeaux

Flambeaux — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:22:20 +0000

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine there is laughter and good red wine.

By: Fireduck

Fireduck — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:41:45 +0000

Yeah, what Centinel said.

By: Centinel

Centinel — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:05:24 +0000

It is tough for us more libertarian-leaning types (sinners). We work hard because it’s in our economic interest, but when we try to play hard, we sometimes feel stymied by our moralist brothers.

Whenever I run into a socio-con who favors things like banning liquor by the drink, smoking, gambling, etc., I tell him that he’s violating God’s will. God gave us free will and then put these things on earth to let us decide and to test us. By removing God’s tests, you’re interfering with his plan, you Communist spawn of Satan.

I don’t really care about the argument; I’ve just been enjoying the testing.

By: Johnny

Johnny — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:30:47 +0000

Huckabee is a health freak because he was a big fatty years ago. I loved the commentary above. Ironically, we have a lefty smoker entering the White House in Jan. I can see him sneaking them, like President Bartlett on The West Wing. lol

By: Prop 8 Goes to Court! Voting; why bother? « Riggword Weblog

Prop 8 Goes to Court! Voting; why bother? « Riggword Weblog — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:43:01 +0000

[...] knows that they will have a willing accomplice in the White House soon. They are emboldened and eager to force their will into your daily lives. So even though you are not a Christian hold on to your [...]

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:59:41 +0000

1) Huckabee’s thing with banning trans fats and smoking isn’t derived, at least not in any rational sense, from his religiously motivated social conservatism. Maybe he tried to keep them in the same box, but those are two entirely different cans of worms.

2) One might observe also that even those intrusive policy preferences that the “extreme” social conservatives have (say, prohibiting contraceptives as an extreme) would remain subject to important procedural constraints like the 4th Amendment. It was always (and still would be) nigh impossible to prosecute such a crime because you can’t get a warrant to investigate it. New left intrusiveness, however, tends to regulate behavior in public, where plain-view rules would always apply.

By: ScurvyOaks

ScurvyOaks — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:00:09 +0000

We do indeed have broad agreement.

My fear is that — perhaps as a reaction to having neglected it too much in earlier times — we have overemphasized the political realm in trying to shape the good society. My hope is that being out of power for a time can help us to refocus more energies into the non-political realm.