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The principles that rule this blog

Principles that will govern my thoughts as I express them here (from my opening statement):


  • Freedom of the individual should be as total as possible, limited only by the fact that nobody should be free to cause physical injury to another, or to deprive another person of his freedoms.
  • Government is necessary primarily to provide those services that private enterprise won't, or won't at a price that people can afford.
  • No person has a right to have his own beliefs on religious, moral, political, or other controversial issues imposed on others who do not share those beliefs.

I believe that Abraham Lincoln expressed it very well:

“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot
so well do, for themselves — in their separate, individual capacities.”


Comments will be invited, and I will attempt to reply to any comments that are offered in a serious and non-abusive manner. However, I will not tolerate abusive or profane language (my reasoning is that this is my blog, and so I can control it; I wouldn't interfere with your using such language on your own!)

If anyone finds an opinion that I express to be contrary to my principles, they are welcome to point this out. I hope that I can make a rational case for my comments. Because, in fact, one label I'll happily accept is rationalist.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

What a surprise!

This blog has been around for a little over 2 years — my first postings were dated February 10, 2006. And up until this week, it's looked as if almost nobody ever looked at it — there were so few comments that I sometimes wondered whether anyone saw my words. I posted on a lot of controversial topics, from Iraq to gun control and intelligent design, yet got almost no response.

Then, almost as a throwaway, I made a post about a topic that seems almost too technical for most people to care: range voting. It was a digression from the usual topics of discussion here. And all of a sudden, to that one post I have gotten more responses than to the whole two years of previous posts, several times over! What a surprise!

Because there are so many comments that address a number of different aspects of this topic, I'm going to split up my discussion into several posts today, each responding to something different. But thank you all for coming in here to discuss it.
Posted by Opinionator at 9:03 AM Labels:

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