I was amazed to discover from my blog back-catalogue that I have never written about the television licence fee, quite an oddity given how much it pisses me off. For those of you who live outside Great Britain you may well be amazed to discover that we must pay a fee of £140 each year […]

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Spitzer’s Sin has been of great interest to me, for a host of reasons. One of those reasons is obvious to our regular readers: we’ve always argued that prostitution should be protected in law as a legitimate right (and I recently wondered if banning it may be unconstitutional, a case I’d love to see […]

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Writing to newspapers is a little hobby of mine, and I’ve enjoyed a good hearing from one local paper in particular, the Belfast Telegraph.
My most recent offering was published today: a reply to journalist Alf McCreary about public funding for the Ulster Orchestra. I can’t find his original article on the newspaper’s website, nor my […]

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There is so much that is wrong about rights; more specifically the way people speak and think about them. The topic is becoming pretty hot here in Northern Ireland at present with a Bill of Rights creeping ever closer. At its most basic a Bill of Rights will be a contract obliging the government to […]

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It’s interesting to observe the political Left at this period in time. It isn’t just the state of fluctuating and redefining of leftist positions as they relate to 21st-century challenges, it’s also the fact that more and more liberal goals seem to be coming into conflict with each other.
This is a good example. […]

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Last week oil firm Royal Dutch Shell reported annual profits of $27.56 billion - £13.9b. That would certainly buy you a pint of beer and a packet of crisps with some money left over for your bus fare home. I’m clearly in the wrong line of business. It’s a record for a British firm, and […]

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Michael Kinsley had an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times on January 12th entitled ‘Libertarians deserve a listen‘. I agree! And I was interested to see the story. The same thing appeared in the Washington Post on the same day titled slightly less favourably The Church Doctrines of Pope Ron Paul, […]

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“A new PBS documentary quotes Andrew Jackson asking Congress to let him clear Indians off the frontier: ‘What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms … ?’
“So here I am, waving my hand like Hermione […]

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Birth by Government: Part I
I apologise for my hiatus during the past few days; I’ve been struggling with an ongoing gut complaint which, inevitably, has me pondering the issue of healthcare. In the UK, where I’m from, healthcare is paid for in taxes and is thereafter free at the point of use. Here […]

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I get several forwards every day in my inbox. A ‘forward’ is of course one of those emails which has been sent to thousands of other people before you, and whose central purpose is to get you to pass it along to everyone on your own email list. They exist merely to multiply, […]

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We’ve recently mentioned cellulosic ethanol, fuel created from a good two-thirds of what we’re currently throwing away, and what many believe will be the future of energy. In fact the more time one spends thinking about it, the more inevitable it seems that we’ll eventually be mining our own landfills, for cellulose, for plastics […]

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I’ve always known this to be a despicable sentiment. But never moreso than when I read Atlas Shrugged for the first time and came upon Francisco d’Anconia’s money speech, which is reprinted with permission from the Estate of Ayn Rand in the current edition of Capitalism Magazine. Everyone could benefit by reading it.
“So […]

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Thanks to my fellow blogger Stephen Graham for a recent spate of great contributions - I know they’ve been popular - including one in which he berates George Monbiot for his atrocious ignorance on libertarianism. Richly deserved. Moonbeam is, rightly, a target of this blog on occasion. He represents the utter antithesis […]

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I love Ron Paul. This guy is my dream presidential candidate. He’s articulate and smart, slightly old-codgerish, and outright, honest-to-God, straight-up libertarian.
Not only that, he’s gaining ground. Yesterday recorded the biggest single day of fundraising by any Republican candidate, ever. And that candidate was Ron Paul. As the San Diego […]

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My article on the virtue of rational self-interest stirred up a bit of debate between one of our regular comment-leavers, Dave Powell, and I. Finishing up his contribution to the debate Dave left a link to an article by George Monbiot in which Monbiot has a little pop at libertarians and libertarianism - or least […]

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Around the web today:
Lev Grossman lends Time Magazine’s coveted honour to the Apple iPhone as it’s branded the “Invention of the Year”. I agree: the iPhone is a smouldering jewel of capitalism, a white-hot fusion of technology, ease of use and style, in your pocket.
William Crawley reports on proposed zero-tolerance laws with regard to […]

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Libertarians: don’t miss this. Drew Carey was a relatively quiet libertarian throughout most of his career as a comedian, TV host and actor… until recently. Drew has been contracted by the Reason Foundation for a series of documentary-style videos online, a project they’re calling Reason TV.

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In moral terms I describe myself as egoist, one who acts in accordance with one’s own rational self-interest. Opponents tend to label it “selfishness”; and in fact some proponents of rational self-interest - such as Ayn Rand - take that label themselves. I agree with much of what Rand argued, but I think her acceptance […]

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From the title the reader would be forgiven for thinking this article is concerned with some quite grand political and theological concepts. Alas I must begin somewhere a little less lofty: doggy sex.

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Man, I love this paper. Each and every day I sneak a peek, the columnists at The Guardian amuse and entertain me immensely with the insights they provide into how the British Left see the world. This post is a sequel to one I did a long time ago with the same name, […]

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