Molinari Society Location Update

Posted on by under liberty and the left

According to the printed program, the Molinari Society’s session at 9:00 tomorrow morning is in Seminar A.

This is a cruel lie.

We are actually in Phillips Boardroom 3.

Okay, no problem, we turn to the map of the hotel that’s included in the program, and – oimoi, there’s no Phillips Boardroom 3 listed.

But I have tracked it down. It’s on the lobby level, at the top of the carpeted ramp at the far right of the lobby as you come in the main entrance.

I figure we may want to start a little bit late tomorrow to accommodate bewildered stragglers.

War with Iran (6): Geraldine Brooks on Iran Air Flight 655

Posted on by under War with Iran

This Op-Ed is a worthy antidote to the hubris, amnesia, hypocrisy, and brutality being offered up to rationalize war on Iran. Kudos to Geraldine Brooks for having written it, and to The New York Times for publishing it. To quote Motörhead:

Blood on all our hands, we cannot hope to wash them clean
History is mystery; do you know what it means?

Well, you do now.

War with Iran (5): Blogging My Way Back to Tulsi

Posted on by under Uncategorized

OK, call me a sucker, but with sweet talk like this tweet below, I’ve decided to reconcile with Tulsi Gabbard after a mere three weeks’ estrangement from her. I haven’t changed my mind on her impeachment vote, but I’ve recently discovered the wonders of that strange and paradoxical virtue, “forgiveness.” As I’ve learned from a pioneering work of Biblical exegesis in a recent issue of Women’s Day,* forgiveness isn’t just kindness to others, but kindness to ourselves. And if kindness to oneself isn’t the essence of virtue, I don’t know (and don’t want to know) what is. Continue reading →

War with Iran (4): The Target Package

Posted on by under War with Iran

Donald Trump has famously and idiotically tried to assuage fears of a war with Iran with the assertion that he had Qasem Suleimani killed not to start a war but to prevent one. Putting aside the ad hoc quality of his reliance on the distinction between the intended and the foreseen, this happens to be a classic case of its total irrelevance: it doesn’t much matter in this context whether Trump intended to start a war, or merely foresaw that he might start one, or just recklessly took his action without thinking too hard about what he was doing. Yes, there’s a distinction to be drawn between a war brought about by intention and a war brought about through extreme recklessness. But it’s a distinction without a difference in a case where the action leading to war initiates force and violates any plausible conception of prudential rationality to boot. It doesn’t help that the rationalization for it comes from a pathological liar. Continue reading →

“Initial Appropriation and Duty-Creation”

Posted on by under Uncategorized

Way back in July, I announced a “forthcoming” discussion here on a bunch of papers that had just been presented at the 36th annual conference of the North American Society for Social Philosophy in San Francisco. Unlike about half of the promises I make at PoT, it looks like I will deliver on this one, so “forthcoming” means “imminent.” Yes, my track record here is about as bad as the Trump Administration’s, but trust me: I have reliable intelligence that all of this is really about to happen.

The first of the two papers will be Jesse Spafford’s “Initial Appropriation and Duty-Creation,” accepted for publication (and yes, imminently about to be published) in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy. It’s a response to Bas Van der Vossen’s “Imposing Duties and Initial Appropriation,” Journal of Political Philosophy 23 (2015): 64-85, so you might want to take a look at that beforehand. Continue reading →

War with Iran (3): Antiwar Activism with Student-Soldiers

Posted on by under War with Iran

An excellent (and for me, live) question on Facebook care of Mark LeVine, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at UC Irvine:

So, fellow academics — The new quarter/semester starts, you get an active duty or reserve service member in your class who might be deployed because of this nightmare Trump is so gleefully creating for us. Do you reach out to her/him and advise/urge/suggest that s/he refuse to deploy for anything related to a war with Iran, explaining that such a war would be a crime against humanity? Or do you wait for them to come to you if they so choose?

Continue reading →

War with Iran (2): Moral Blackmail and Salvation by Faith

Posted on by under War with Iran

The moral blackmail regarding Iran has begun, and often enough, it sounds like this:

If you had certain intelligence of an imminent threat on American lives, would you or would you not use military force to stop the person responsible for it?

If you say that you wouldn’t, you sound like a callous traitor, willing to sacrifice American lives to the Iranian regime. If you say you would (or even “I would under these circumstances”), you’re effectively ratifying the Trump Administration’s decision to kill Qasem Suleimani, and by implication ratifying-in-advance whatever decision it ends up making about war. And that’s the whole game. Continue reading →

War with Iran? (1)

Posted on by under War with Iran

Well, major escalation at any rate. The New York Times tries to walk it back in a pro forma attempt to identify the aggressor. They get an “A” for effort, but “How did the confrontation escalate?” is not an answer to “Who initiated the aggression?”or “Who, if anyone, is the aggressor?” I discussed that issue here a few months ago. It’s come up here as well. (And here: Vicente Medina’s response to me.) I’m inclined to think that we’re the aggressor.

Continue reading →

Molinari Review I.2: What Lies Within?

Posted on by under book announcement, liberty and the left

The long-awaited second issue of the Molinari Review (the Molinari Institute’s interdisciplinary, open-access, libertarian academic journal) is here! Nearly twice the length of the first issue!

You can order a paper copy from Amazon US, Amazon Canada, Amazon UK, or, I believe, any of the other regional incarnations of Amazon.

(A Kindle copy should be available later this month. In the meantime, the previous issue is available as a free PDF download here.)

So what’s in the new issue? Here’s a rundown: Continue reading →

Notes on the Jersey City Shooting (2)

Posted on by under Uncategorized

In an earlier post, I took issue with the widespread but premature tendency to “link” the recent Jersey City shooting to the Black Hebrew Israelite (or Black Israelite) movement. From what I’ve read, the tendency takes the form of inflating the shooters’ interest in the group into a “link to” the group (suggesting something like membership), the implication being that the group’s ideology helps explain the shooters’ motivations, hence explains the shooting (suggesting something like complicity by the group itself).

Continue reading →