Matthew Yglesias has a good post on the distinction between libertarianism and liberalism:

One way that I think liberals tend to go wrong is to adopt libertarian-style arguments in favor of the liberal position on issues where there's overlap between the liberal and libertarian policy positions. Take the example of gay rights. You could take a libertarian position on this issue and say that irrespective of what you think of gay people, their conduct, and the social consequences of toleration for homosexuality that it's simply not the role of the state to be trying to influence human behavior in this regard. Alternatively, you could take what I would consider to be a more forthrightly liberal position and say that people who think there's something morally wrong with homosexual conduct are simply mistaken, and that the reason it would be wrong for the government to discourage gay sex isn't that it would be wrong for the government to do that, but rather simply that it would be wrong to discourage conduct that is no better or worse, morally speaking, than heterosexual conduct.

But I think he misses a crucial point of difference, which if missed leads into the problem of "big government" and planned societies. Liberalism is a social philosophy, whereas libertarianism is a strictly governmental philosophy. Libertarianism is concerned only with what the government may or may not make laws about. Liberalism is concerned not only with what governments should do, but also with what should happen in the socio-cultural sphere. When Matt points out that liberals want homosexuality to be not just permitted but accepted, it does not follow that government legislation should be the method of attaining that end. One of the more encouraging developments in recent years on the left is a shift away from assuming that government was the appropriate tool to achieve whatever ends were deemed desirable, and the greater development of non-coercive institutions and cultural forces. So there are really two traps for liberals thinking like libertarians: 1) That libertarian rationale will not sustain the fight once the legal battles (often the easiest ones, since the target is so clear) are won -- this is in part the reason so many people consider feminism passe now that women by and large have equality before the law. 2) That libertarian preoccupation with government will be carried over into liberal cultural territory -- leading to things such as hate crime laws and speech codes.

1) My latest commentary and cartoons are up.

2) Hauskaa syntymäpäivää, Thomas Robert Malthus!!!

For reasons I can't fathom without losing respect for the man, Colin Powell claimed that the most recent message from Osama bin Laden proves that al-Qaida is in league with Iraq. But of course, the tape doesn't show any complicity on Iraq's part (and thus can't be evidence to boost a case for war). Just because Osama loves Saddam doesn't mean Saddam loves Osama back.

But in fact the tape doesn't even show that Osama loves Saddam. As has been pointed out by many people, Osama describes Iraq's rulers as "socialist" and "infidel." We've known this about al-Qaida's attitudes to the Baath Party (which is in fact socialist and infidel [i.e. non-Muslim]) for some time. What remained in question was whether there would be a marriage of convenience, since (as Osama pointed out in his latest release) America is the greater enemy.

But Osama's message doesn't even say he's interested in a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" sort of deal (of the sort the US has gotten quite good at, in allying with such worthies as Uzbekistan and Pakistan). Osama says "there will be no harm if the interests of Muslims converge with the interests of the socialists in the fight against the crusaders." In other words, Osama is making the quite small concession that Muslims will be forgiven if, in their zeal to destroy the Great Satan, they inadvertantly help Iraq. That's quite an alliance they've got there.

The fact-value distinction is one of those bits of modern philosophical thought that is often maligned by the cutting edge today. In its time, it was seen as an important advance over religious and mystical ways of looking at the world, which assumed that a sort of natural morality existed -- that you could discover a code of behavior grounded on the way the world is. But the fact-value distinction showed that, short of a direct command from God, such a project was impossible. You can't derive an "ought" from an "is." This has remained a powerful analytic tool. But it has come under fire from thinkers who challenge the ability to separate objective, innocent facts from our values.

On the surface, this seems like a retreat, back to the days when there was no fact-value distinction. But in a sense it is also another step forward. In premodern thought, both facts and values were considered factual -- characteristics of the world. Modern thinkers realized that values aren't factual -- they are meanings that people bring to the world. Postmodern thought seems to be saying that facts aren't factual, either. Thus the break with one aspect of premodern thought is made complete by restoring another.

I often have problems keeping what an author actually said straight, especially when reading more philosophical texts. The ideas I associate with a book or article are the most significant or insightful thoughts that came to my mind as I was reading it. But these aren't necessarily the arguments that the author was intending to convey. They can be suggestions that come to me from looking in a direction that the author only pointed, or by reshaping the author's concepts in the context of my other thoughts, beliefs, and experiences. Today we were discussing the concept of authentic and inauthentic places in Edward Relph's Place and Placelessness. I talked about how I saw authentic places working out in the world, and was frustrated when people countered with "but that's not what Relph said about place." While I understand the importance of having a firm grasp of what influential thinkers and schools actually said, I'm more comfortable working out the lines of thought that a theory suggests. A preoccupation with what a theorist really meant seems to imply that the theorist has a unique claim to genius.

Turkey Calls For Emergency NATO Consultations Early today, France, Germany and Belgium blocked the automatic start of NATO procedures for the military planning to protect Turkey, arguing it would force the crisis into a "logic of war" when some peaceful diplomatic alternatives still stood a chance of success. "It would signify that we have already entered into the logic of war, that ... any chance, any initiative to still resolve the conflict in a peaceful way was gone," Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said.

France and Germany aren't helping anyone here. I'm assuming their languages have a word for "contingency plan." If a war looks likely, no matter how undesirable it is, you should plan what to do in case it happens. Having a plan B does not prevent you from pursuing plan A -- it gives you a recourse if plan A fails. How is it acceptable to ignore the potential needs of an ally in order to score political points?

Idrisi has been in the kiosk for an awfully long time. And since I'm no longer the TA for the Intro GIS class, I don't have any pressing reason to hate it anymore. So I'm putting my heating system in the kiosk. I've been all right lately, but there's something wrong when you set your thermostat to 85 and the temperature only reaches 45.

CalPundit thinks that "the French are acting strangely" in proposing their new plan for handling Iraq. On the surface of it, it does seem strange. The French proposal is for increased inspections backed by a deployment of UN soldiers. Like most people, I can't imagine how the plan would work (for starters, why would Saddam allow UN soldiers to occupy his country?), and so it's providing fodder for the people who like to describe every French action as "not serious."

But I think the French plan makes sense taken in context of French motivations and the corner they've painted themselves into. French leaders (who are the ones I mean when I say "the French" here) oppose the war for three reasons: oil, votes, and power. They have oil interests in Iraq that they fear they'd lose if the US took over (a fear that becomes more and more justified the worse Franco-American relations get). The French public is anti-war for a variety of reasons, so their elected officials can't go gung-ho for a war without risking their jobs. And France doesn't like the idea of US hegemony, so they fancy themselves (alone or as part of a French-German-led EU) as a counterbalancing power now that the Soviet Union is gone.

Nevertheless, opposition to war is becoming more costly. The US has made it quite clear that we don't need France, but France still needs us if it wants to remain relevant in the world. And the evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs has entered the gray area I talked about before. They can no longer credibly claim that Iraq is clean, and the subtle argument that he's bad, but not bad enough to go to war over, is tough to make in a political mileu that rewards clear, unambiguous statements. And there's the possibility that they may have genuinely been convinced by Colin Powell's arguments at the UN.

So the French need to do something about Iraq, but they can't simply sign on to the American invasion. They'd lose credibility in the eyes of a dovish electorate, and acquiesce to American power. So they've come up with this new plan to steer between the poles of peace and American war. It's couched in the language of police-style enforcement, so it's less likely to scare off people who don't want war. Yet it's tough enough to satisfy anyone worried about giving Saddam a free pass. Most importantly, it puts the UN and the French in the driver's seat.

Guielines On School Prayer Issued Schools that don't allow students to pray outside the classroom or teachers to hold religious meetings among themselves could face the loss of federal money, the Education Department said Friday. The guidelines reflect the Bush administration's push to ensure that schools give teachers and students as much freedom to pray as court rulings have allowed. The department makes clear that teachers may not pray with students or attempt to shape their religious views.

With all the (often justified) concern about Bush's blurring of the line between church and state, it's nice to see a reasonable and balanced policy come out of the administration. It's a good reminder that the president is a person with a set of often unpalatable views and the power to enforce them, not a nutcase hell-bent on becoming an American ayatollah. But it's a measure of my own skepticism that my first thought was to figure out where the catch in this policy is, and to wonder how it could be abused if school prayer became a politically important issue (and in fact the reasonableness of the policy may reflect its low profile in today's political landscape, as church-state concerns are focussed on the faith-based charities issue).

University of Michigan is a racist and anti-white institution - offering 20 points for registration, if you are not white. It is already evil in that they suppress student free speech for discussing and debating Nature's Harmonic Time Cube Principle. Integration equates unnatural racial slop. Does black mentality need the 20 points to equate the mentality of the white race, or is it an evil ploy to subdue the white race? What anti-white force is behind this evil? I will not receive one educator reaction, as their power is in ignoring ineffable Truth. How can such an evil school exist in USA.

Time Cube goes political. Saddam Hussein is educated stupid.