Gun laws in Texas faces court fights
There is a recent court battle over the right to carry a gun into university classrooms. The professors seems to be against it and some students seem to be for it.
Am I nuts or is there something wrong with the gun laws in this country?
I can think of no other country in the world, developed or developing, that even suggest that students should have the right to carry a gun into a classroom.
This is nothing less than the flight of reason from out national debates.
A discussion with a libertarian
I recently met a true-blooded libertarian in a Starbucks restaurant and had an interesting discussion with him. He was against my idea of a world government – the ultimate anti-thesis to libertarianism.
He was raised in Tanzania and South African. He had enough of authoritarian governments. He said he would rather die than live under big government: “Give me liberty or give me death.”
The argument on my side was that his belief probably will mean “give me death” because of the constant threat of a nuclear World War III. In the meantime we are wasting over a trillion dollars a year on useless armament buildups. This money — if properly invested and not poured down the rotten holes of corrupt governments — could possibly end world poverty.
We both disagreed with each other: one side believing in very limited government and “letting everyone free to do what they wanted to do” and the other side believing in a larger government that could (if we got morality back into the government) lead a better quality of life for everyone – in the long term.
This is a perfect example of a thesis and an anti-thesis. Why should we even try to resolve this now? Can’t we simply state the thesis and the anti-thesis clearly, accept both of them, and discuss them in a civil manner?
We both agreed to this idea.
A libertarian English town
A small town in England decided to reduce its carbon emissions as its contribution to fight global warming. With no help from the government, they succeeded – by adding solar panels, windmills, insulation, and so on. They reduced their carbon emissions by 25%. They had town meetings and wouldn’t even allow politicians to speak. They wanted no help – and no interference – from the government.
The Columbian government and the Marxist rebels kiss and make up
The Marxist rebels, called FARC, were the last significant group of revolutionaries in Latin America. They wanted to establish an idealistic society were there would be economic equality and government ownership of production. They financed their revolution largely by being the biggest cocaine producers in the world, supplying 60% of the U.S. consumption of cocaine. The second largest income producer was the kidnapping of wealthy persons and demanding ransom. Some idealism!
This seems to be the last whimper of almost a century battle between two main ideas: democratic free enterprise and communism. And for the moment, free enterprise has won, after making a few compromises (a synthesis), which has resulted in free enterprise with a heart.
However, there is no free lunch. There never is. The deal between FARC and the government has to be passed by a national referendum. It is also problematic how the society will recover from this clash of ideas, especially when rebel criminals are given amnesty and a path to a democratic political career. Then the country has to deal with the problem of the sudden loss of cocaine profits by the poor, rural population.
This really answered my problem, thank you!