chill 4:37 pm
With my health improving only slowly and the semester drawing to a close, I need to take a break from non-essentials for a while. I fully intend to make good on my promise to examine some of St. Al Plantinga’s works, and I have even gotten a few of his books and some secondary sources sitting on my shelf.
Anyway, this new WordPress thingy is kind of strange but less clumsy. Still way better than Blogger.
general religion and news faith, general religion, Madeline Neumann 9:31 pm
WESTON, Wis. — An 11-year-old girl died after her parents prayed for healing rather than seek medical help for a treatable form of diabetes, police said Tuesday.
Vergin said an autopsy determined the girl died from diabetic ketoacidosis, an ailment that left her with too little insulin in her body, and she had probably been ill for about 30 days, suffering symptoms like nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness.
This is the ugly side to religion, for sure.
news and politics gravel, libertarian, politics 3:56 pm
Ok, not exactly. But he wants to:
Fed up with being excluded from the debates and otherwise marginalized, former Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska announced today that he will seek the Libertarian Party nomination for president.
Source
I don’t understand this at all. I mean, you do have to be a libertarian to be in the party, right?
Libertarian Quotes libertarian, politics, quotes 3:51 pm
Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.
– Milton Friedman
news and politics cato, politics, public schools, school choice 9:33 am
On April 16, Cato will be hosting a policy forum putting Mr. Stern, Cato’s Andrew Coulson, Gary Huggins of the Aspen Institute’s Commission on No Child Left Behind, and University of Texas at San Antonio economics professor John Merrifield on the same stage to debate the big question: Is school choice enough to fix American education, or are government standards the key?
Fight the good fight, Cato.
Libertarian Quotes libertarian, politics, quotes 9:29 am
What kind of people are constitutions designed to govern? I think that the simplest answer to that question is people like you and me, people with good days and bad days. Within the context of governmental power, however, we are more worried about what people will do on their bad days than we are pleased about their behavior on their good days. A fine despot may do wonders for a while: public roads may be constructed, trains may run on time, and the Dow may reach three thousand. But a bad despot, or a good despot turned bad, has quite the opposite effect. Our concerns go beyond potholes, train delays, and the bear market. We worry about tyranny, terror, confiscation, segregation, imprisonment, and death. There is more to fear from the downside that there is to gain from the upside. It is not that all people will behave in irresponsible ways once they assume public office. It is enough that a few unprincipled people in hight positions can wreak public havoc…We should set our presumption against the concentration of power in the hands of government.
–Richard A. Epstein
This is, of course, the primary reason to be against a concentration of power into a small group of people.
Libertarian Quotes goethe, libertarian, politics, quote 3:22 pm
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Agnostic Blogger 