So the riots are Society's fault? So much for individual responsibility! That's a rather quaint perspective from a libertarian!
That is not what I said. You have a lot of skill in attacking strawmen. I'm guessing you must practice a lot.
You wouldn't care to post some support for that assertion, would you?
Yes, as a matter of fact, I would.
| | The violence has drawn comparisons with riots that raged through suburbs nationwide in 2005, and has shown that anger still smolders in poor housing projects where many Arabs, blacks and other minorities live largely isolated from the rest of society.
[...]
There have long been tensions between France's largely white police force and ethnic minorities in poor neighborhoods. Despite decades of problems and heavy state investments to improve housing and create jobs, the depressed projects that ring Paris are a world apart from the tourist attractions of the French capital. Police speak of no-go zones where they and firefighters fear to patrol. | |
-http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,313024,00.html
| | In this week's events, young men, often hooded, roamed the suburbs at night and firebombed cars, dumpsters and a library. They did not shout Muslim demands, spray Muslim graffiti or wear the trademark beards and baggy pants of a salafi. They did not gather at mosques or shout "Allah-o-akbar!" They avoided journalists, presumably seeing them as part of "the system" that they oppose, and made no demands related to Islam. When those detained were questioned by police, they were not asked about their religion or ethnic identity -- that's not allowed in France.
So my first question is -- how are we supposed to write as fact that they are Muslims? Where are the facts to justify phrases like "Muslim riots" or "French intifada?"
Some might say that we know these riots happen in "Muslim neighbourhoods." But when journalists go visit them, they find neighbourhoods that are multiracial, multicultural, multilingual and multifaith. Judging by the faces seen on the streets, there are Arabs (mostly from North Africa), blacks from Africa and the Caribbean, people from the Indian Subcontinent (often Sri Lankans) and whites -- yes, poor French whites. There are Muslims who pray in mosques and Christians who attend various churches, including a growing number of African evangelicals. Here and there in Paris or its suburbs, you even find poor Jews who moved to France from North Africa -- some even still speak Arabic and live peacefully with their Muslim neighbours. And don't forget there are a lot of agnostics and atheists out there -- this is France, after all, where the average rate of regular attendance in churches, synagogues and mosques is about 10 percent. | |
-http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2007/11/29/why-we-dont-call-them-muslim-riots-in-paris-suburbs/
In other words, they aren't denying it, they just point out that, well, it's not
just Muslims that live in those neighborhoods, and then entirely avoid the question of who was doing the rioting, leaving the reader to draw a conclusion they can plausibly deny having outright stated if challenged on it. Cute.
By the way, re your other question:
Allegedly libertarian? And I suppose you know what a "true" libertarian is? What a silly question, of course you do. Fundamentalism is so freeing. Anyway, please feel free to go beyond your vague accusation that ideas promoted by Reason don't work out when put into practice. You can provide an example, I'm sure, so please, don't worry about hurting my feelings. Provide the example. I'm sure it will be nothing short of 100% accurate and true with no coloring of bias from you at all.
Here's an example of the kind of brilliant thinking that permeates Reason's brand of "libertarianism" I give you the Divine Miss Howley:
Last week the London Times ran a less-than-groundbreaking "Europe needs more babies" opinion piece, this one by avowed "eco-puritan" Melanie McDonagh. Understandably, McDonagh is worried about her pension and health care in the absence of gurgling future taxpayers. But the folks at The Economist blog will not be guilted into breeding:
Longman and McDonagh seem to envision breeding and childrearing as a sort of public good likely to be underprovided if individuals are left to their own selish devices. Those of us who decline to yield future workers are free riding off all that "human capital" produced by altuistic pram-pushers. But, as always, there is too little altruism to go around. So we should go for the next best thing: tax incentives.
There is something inherently repellant about a social vision in which wombs and their fruits are conceived primarily in terms of future labor productivity and tax receipts. But you don't have to be repelled to see that the "kids as public goods" picture doesn't add up.
First, it should be obvious that nations don't have to have pension systems highly sensitive to worker-to-retiree ratios. A shift to a system of mandatory personal retirement accounts immediately solves that problem. And then there are substitutes to native-born children. People born in other countries can also work and pay taxes. Indeed, if yours is a rich country, billions of less-rich people would like to come there. So let more of them come. And then there is technological progress, which allows machines to do some formerly human jobs, and increases the productivity of remaining human labour.
There is no reason a nation with a shrinking population cannot maintain steady rates of GDP per capita growth if mechanization and labour productivity gains keep up a good pace. Indeed, George Mason economist Robin Hanson argues that soon enough robots will be doing almost all the jobs [pdf] anyway. So it is easy enough to imagine a country that maintains a high standard of living as the population eventually shrinks to ... nothing. People differ rather vehemently on this issue, but I see nothing wrong with a population dwindling away entirely, as long as living conditions remain high.
There is much more, all of it worth reading. But ultimately you have to wonder whether lengthy refutations of pro-fertility economic (as opposed to cultural) claims are just a waste of pixels. Worries about population decline, like worries over overpopulation that preceded them and worries about immigration that coincide with them, are tied to a particular vision of a particular society--and it's not a vision that is likely to be argued away by positing the sustainability of social security accounts.
Singapore's natalist agenda is in place largely to help maintain the Chinese majority; John Gibson warns American non-hispanics that it's time to "do your duty" and "make more babies." McDonagh is worried about population decline, yet she somehow sees fit to promote immigration restrictions as a coping mechanism. All of which is why Mark Steyn's Oh-shit-the-Muslims-are-breeding polemic America Alone is a less intellectual book than Philip Longman's economically inclined The Empty Cradle, and probably a more important one.
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/121644.htmlThat's so good, I'll repeat part of it:
So it is easy enough to imagine a country that maintains a high standard of living as the population eventually shrinks to ... nothing. People differ rather vehemently on this issue, but I see nothing wrong with a population dwindling away entirely, as long as living conditions remain high. All individual lives come to an end, but they are not therefore worthless. Societies don't last forever either, and neither do nation-states. A society that fades away in high style might count as a spectacular human triumph, not a failure. Where's the underprovided public good in steady-growth population decline?
In a nutshell, that's the kind of world-view that permeates the brilliant thinking at Reason - they give not a flying fuck about the literally thousands of generations that lived and died to give them the world they have, nor the subsequent generations who will have to either clean up their mess or just live with the consequences - if there even are any subsequent generations, something else they apparently give not a flying fuck about, either. Hell, open the borders, and give them their cheap nannies and housekeepers and gardeners and farm-workers, so they won't have to be bothered with taking care of their own children, or houses, or gardens. Who cares what kind of problems this causes for subsequent generations? It's not like this country actually has any history of ethnic strife that still hasn't been resolved to this day, is it? As long as it enables getting their rocks off today, who cares what problems it leaves someone else? Even extinction is a small price to pay.
I give you Ron Bailey:
Do We Owe Future Generations Anything?
Ronald Bailey | March 25, 2008, 10:50am
Over at the environmenatist webzine Grist ("gloom and doom with a sense of humor"*) Bill Becker argues:
Intergenerational ethics argue against us leaving massive, intractable problems for future generations, forcing them to deal in perpetuity with nuclear wastes, carbon sequestration sites and geo-engineering systems ? all subject to human error and to failures that would be deadly.
Really? Perhaps intergenerational ethics tells us that poor people (us) should not sacrfice their livelihoods, health and welfare for rich people (future generations). Reducing current incomes will certainly be deadly for some people now alive.
Should people making an average of $7000 per year be forced to lower their incomes in order to boost the incomes of future generations that some scenarios project will have incomes in 2100 over $107,000 per capita in developed countries and over $66,000 in developing countries? Also keep in mind that not only will future generations be much richer, they will have access to better technologies with which to address any problems caused by man-made climate change, nuclear waste and geo-engineering projects.
As bioethicists are always fond of saying, I'm just asking questions here.
*Humor? Not so much.
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/125680.htmlYou notice a reoccurring theme here - let's have a good time today, and let somebody else clean up the mess ("Don't worry Mr. Reardon - you'll think of something!") - if there even is a somebody else...
At least it's pretty clear why this bunch of libertarians doesn't seem so keen on Ayn Rand - there's a hell of a lot more Wesley Mouch than John Galt about them!
This isn't even libertarianism, it's just nihilism, and I gave up on nihilism about the time Sid Vicious died. If that's the modern state of libertarianism, you can have it. It certainly has nothing to say to me.
