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Saturday, July 24, 2004

Washington DC-based blog by Canuck ex-pat

Matt Vadum's blog is well worth reading even if it is sometimes inadequately punctuated, although that may be a sign of his extreme (albeit seemingly lessening) libertarianism. Consider this post, from a few weeks ago, on Ann Coulter:

"Three of the reasons --the list is long-- why liberals don't like
Ann Coulter are because she's obnoxious and haughty and righteously indignant. Liberals think they hold a monopoly on these qualities."

Note: Matt and I were colleagues in the mid-1990s at a monthly paper which, I noticed, is not listed in his biography. At the time he described himself as a (and I hope I have the spelling correct) minarchist -- a mini anarchist. I fondly recall him calling objectivsts statists. I still don't know if he was joking. But he is serious enough in his libertarianism that I understand he is never returning to Canuckistan.

Posted by Paul Tuns on July 24, 2004 in Weblogs | Permalink

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Comments

Paul ~

I consider myself a minarchist, but my understanding of minarchism isn't that it is some sort of miniature anarchism, it's more of a minimal-state ism. Here's a better introduction, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarchism:

"Minarchism, sometimes clumsily called minimal statism, is the view of civics that government should be as small as possible. However, minarchists often disagree on just how small that is. Many minarchists consider themselves part of the libertarian tradition.

"Supporters usually argue that anarchism is naive and goes too far towards simplicity, and that what they call minarchy continues traditions of classical liberal philosophy in their original form.

"Radical minarchists usually agree that government should be restricted to its "minimal" or "night-watchman" state functions of government (courts, police, prisons, defence forces). Some other minarchists include in the role of government the management of essential common infrastructure (roads, money); some, by what is sometimes reproached to them as a slippery slope, include quite a lot in such essential infrastructure (schools, hospitals, social security). Actually, these minarchists often accept (in a conservative rather than principled way) as valid some of current government's domain, and consider it more urgent to stop the expansion of government than to reduce its domain to any particular size. Minarchists are generally opposed to government programs which transfer wealth or which subsidize certain sectors of the economy."

Posted by: Tony | 2004-07-25 10:52:05 AM



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