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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, October 14, 2009

More on the Peace Prize

There was a column which I saw today entitled "Nobel panel mad about Bush" (click on the title of this piece to see it) which deserves reading. Its thesis is that the award given to President Barack Obama is just the latest of a series of expressions of the committee's dislike of the previous president, George W. Bush.

I didn't think of this point when I wrote yeaterday's blog post, but that is probably true to more of an extent than I might have thought. After all, the political left really despises Bush. I'm not sure why they do even more than other conservative presidents like Reagan — perhaps because he won on the electoral vote while losing the popular (though that's just the way the Constitution works); perhaps because he had the temerity to insist on playing by the rules rather than letting Gore's people insist on recount after recount until the results got changed to Gore's liking (which Al Franken was able to do because of a sympathetic Minnesota court system let him). But for whatever reason, the left hates Bush more than any political group has hated any president lately. And, as I said yesterday, the Nobel Committee has become the left wing's own property.

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