Showing posts with label Morality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Morality. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Mission Accomplished! Right?


Now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, can we please bring our troops home?

Not so fast! Bin Laden's body had yet to sink to the bottom of the sea before our 'leaders' began re-justifying their "War on Terror."

The "War on Terror," the "War on Drugs," and the "War on Poverty" are all un-winnable wars with unclear objectives. However, they do allow the Federal government to destroy personal liberty, ignore habeas corpus, torture, invade foreign countries, increase taxes, and pit one class against the other. Instead of "Just say no to drugs", let's "Just say no to unconstitutional wars."

Photo Credit: here

Friday, March 25, 2011

The Thought of Czesław Miłosz

"When someone is honestly 55% right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God. But what’s to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100% right? Whoever says he’s 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal."

Dublin Review of Books | All Things Considered - The Thought of Czesław Miłosz - Enda O’Doherty

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Egypt: Behold the Power of Liberty

As the oppressive Mubarak regime of falls in Egypt, the Bastiat Society is once again humbled and amazed by the power of liberty and the desire for freedom. We are reminded of these words, drafted by another oppressed population over 230 years ago:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

The unanimous Declaration of Independence
adopted by the US Congress on July 4, 1776.


For more on the ongoing Egyptian revolution click here:

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The Moral Choice

"Suppose, for example, that someone is a devout Muslim who is anxious to have as many people as possible bow to Mecca three times a day; to him let us suppose this is the highest moral act. But if he wields coercion to force everyone to bow to Mecca, he is thereby depriving everyone of the opportunity to be moral — to choose freely to bow to Mecca. Coercion deprives a man of the freedom to choose and, therefore, of the possibility of choosing morally."

Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty, pages 104-105.