Spearmint

Well a better description of minarchy might be the belief that the government should be as small as possible, subject to some specified constraints - ie it must be capable of protecting the rights of its citizens. Given a list of functions that the government must perform (eg prosecuting criminals, providing a military etc etc), the best governmen would be the smallest one possible which is capable of performing all of these. The main disagreements amongst minarchists would obviously be what exactly constitutes protecting rights; eg whether the government should have the authority to run prisons, operate roads, or limit the selling of antibiotics (and so on). In times of war, the government would have to be bigger in order to satisfy the given constraints - the particular context which a country existed in would determine the precise size of the government, but in all cases it must be the smallest one possible where rights are still protected. I'm making all this up as I go along though, so whatever. I dont really use the term minarchist myself since most people have never heard of it before, and saying 'I support laissez faire' is a lot easier.

Minarchism is a term often used by libertarians to refer to the belief that government should be 'as small as possible'. Quite how small this is will depend upon the libertarian in question, but it normally involves the kind of "no role aside from protecting rights" state championed by people such as Rand and Nozick. It has nothing whatsoever to do with anarcho-capitalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarchism

I would say it depends almost entirely on the person involved - there's no "one size fits all" way of responding to potentially emotional events. That said, I would imagine that the psychological trauma is generally a function of either a) the guilt caused by believing that abortion is wrong, or akin to murder. This may well affect people who 'know' that there is nothing wrong with abortion - when you've been taught something all your life, and are placed in a society where people reenforce it every day, it can be hard to exorcize it from your emotions no matter what you might 'know' on a rational level. In this sense, the guilt could well be subconscious. Or simply not knowing if you've made the right decision. While some pregnancies are obviously wanted and some arent, I assume theres a lot that fall somewhere in-between. A girl could have had no plans for a baby, but once shes pregnant she may become attached to the idea of motherhood, and not be sure whether she wants to go through with it or not. This is a fairly big choice to have to make, and I suppose it would be natural for a person to wonder if they'd made the right decision for some time afterwards. That being said, I dont think this constitutes an argument for the man to be legally forced to pay for the abortion. It's certainly a moral argument, in the sense that a person who gets a woman pregnant and then doesnt give her support (both emotional and financial) when it comes to the abortion probably isnt a very nice person, but I really dont think that it has anything to do with the government.

This certainly isnt how I read it. The suggestion seems to be that the contract, which would normally be binding, is not enforcable for "moral reasons". Obviously I dont have a copy of the actual ruling, nor am I a lawyer, so I accept I may well be mistaken. Also This seems to suggest that if your identity is not anonymous, ie you can be identified as the father, you will have a legal obligation to support the child regardless of contractual issues. As an analogy, consider I made a woman I was going to have sex with sign a contract which stated that she alone would be responsible for supporting a child should an unplanned pregnancy occur; this (as far as I know) would not be honoured in court for 'ethical reasons'. This surely isnt all that different to the case of non-anonymous sperm donors.

http://nationalreview.com/comment/taylor200407211921.asp

Yeah, I agree; I'm normally fairly sceptical about government sources (and non-government sources too, if we're being honest). I'm inclined to believe this one though because it's fairly consistent with what I assumed had happened from my own reading of the first article. I'm not entirely convinced that they would have bothered arresting these men at the airport based solely on the complaint of a single passenger though, so I would imagine the air marshalls had at least some suspicions. The part about them thinking it was the woman herself who might be a terrorist would be amusing, if true.

Oh look, it appears I was right. http://www.kfi640.com/ericleonard.html

http://cl.cnn.com/ctxtlink/jsp/cnn-story.j...nn_law_dyn_ctxt Apparently the law is even worse than first suspected.

The chances of marriage being abolished as a state institution within the next 10 years are precisely 0. During this time, a lot of gay people are going to miss out on benefits which they are entitled to. Since legalising gay marriage is an achievable goal whereas replacement with civil unions is a pipedream (within the current context), it makes sense to campaign for the former as opposed to the latter. Think of it as being similar to the rationale which people use to justify voting for 'the lesser of 2 evils' when it comes to elections, rather than "wasting their vote" on a third party.

They are both responsible for the pregnancy; surely the father doesnt have the moral obligation to pay the entire cost of the abortion? (or did you actually mean that he should contribute towards the cost?) And yeah, I find the laws mandating 'compulsory fatherhood', assuming the mother chooses to give birth, to be one of the most repugnant parts of the current legal system.

Actually you're possibly correct here; there's quite a lot of complexity involved in Constitutional interpretation. I was focusing mainly on clear-cut cases where a law is obviously unconstitutional (eg the draft), and not considering more run-of-the-mill cases. I'll have to think about this a bit more.

edit: deleted this post since it wasnt needed, stephen's post below explains things a lot better.

He was, second last page ("Ragner Danneskjold lay stretched on a couch, reading a volume of the works of Aristotle"). Plato was mentioned somewhere in the Fountainhead I think.

I think this is incorrect, though a fairly common misconception. Many forms of meditation claim to be geared towards heightening self-awareness, concentration, and a person's general focus. Release - often 'mystical' techniques actually work, although for different reasons than their practitioners believe. African tribes believed that their shaman had 'magic powers' which let him cure tribesmen through the use of plants. They were correct that the plants used did have healing powers, but obviously their explanation of why this is so was incorrect. Practitioners of the i-ching system of 'reading the future' believe their insights are mystical, but the process involved (finding patterns in yarrow sticks) isnt all that different in theory from Rorschach inkblot tests, which are a standard in Western psychology. People who strongly believe that God will cure them of their diseases are often more likely to recover than those that don't - not because of any divine intervention, but because of the placebo effects of their optimism (this is the standard explanation for 'faith healing'). The fact that a technique is justified by irrationality does not mean that it doesnt work - there may well be a completely acceptable scientific explanation for it. If you get beneficial effects from meditation, I would advise you to continue doing it.

This is true, I was mainly wanting to point out that what consitutes 'objective law' might actually be somewhat subjective. There are those that believe that the authority of the Constitution should take precedence over any existing laws in the event of conflict even on the individual level (I align myself with this side), and there are those that believe that all existing laws should be upheld at individual and court level even when they conflict with the Constitution (I assume you are in this camp). I think we can all agree that unconstitional/immoral laws _should_ be overturned, but the question here is what to do in the meantime, while we are waiting for this to happen. As you can probably tell, I am absolutely against the enforcement of unjust laws, and if I am in the position to prevent their enforcement without endangering myself, I will do so. I do not believe that it is correct to sacrifice innocent people in order to "uphold the rule of law". With this in mind, I am obviously going to support jury nullification under the present circumstances.

Surely the 'rule of law' is undermined whenever a law that is unconstitutional gets upheld in court? A jury that is guided by the Constitution is more respecting of objective law than one which is guided by the transient whims of leglislators.

I think people with different views are often more interesting to talk to. Continually debating with people who agree with you on most things tends to get boring. If someone is sufficiently intelligent, they're likely to provide enjoyable conversation regardless of their beliefs. Obviously this alone won't make them one of your good friends, but when you spend a lot of time talking to a person, your affection towards them tends to grow.

You were the one who brought up the second amendment, not me. Also, nothing in that article addresses the 'protection against oppressive government' argument, which is the entire reason why the second amendment exists in the first place. Also, tanks and machine guns are not "weapons of mass destruction".

In that case you should probably petition for an amendment to the Constitution, because the 2nd amendment, considered along with the expressed wishes of the people who wrote it, quite clearly implies that private (militia) ownership of military hardware is allowed. As I said, I'm not sure if I agree that the 'protect against government tyranny' argument is still valid in this day and age. I only brought it up because you implied that the 2nd amendment was intended to give people the right to defend themself in day to day using 'proportionate force', which is demonstratably incorrect.

As I said in the post you quoted:

I'm not sure what kind of car I'd picture him as driving since I dont really know that much about cars, but it would definitely have to be black

Ok, thanks. I'll stick with the one I have in that case.

Yes. Despite argive's claim above, the 2nd amendment was not just "the codification of the right to self defence", but was also intended to ensure that people had the means to to overthrow an oppresive government if the situation called for it. If this line of reasoning were followed to its conclusion (and for the record I dont think I agree with it but I'm not entirely sure atm), then private ownership of tanks and planes would certainly be justified. Remember that people like Jefferson expected strong local militias to exist, in order to protect against (amongst other things), the federal government. Although he lived before the time tanks were invented, I do not think that he would have opposed their ownership by militias in addition to firearms. It would certainly seem inconsistent to both advocate strong militias capable of opposing the government, while also denying them the means to do so.

I agree with this completely, however I wasnt talking about self defence. The examples I gave were foreign aid and the protection of premises, which is currently carried out by a private army, ie a large number of men armed with guns. Obviously a person shouldn't be allowed to drive around in an operational tank just in case he gets involved in road rage - tanks and planes are not legitimate means of self-defence at an individual level in daily life, and I never claimed that they were. On a sidenote, I suspect you could kill just as many people with a correctly chosen assault rifle and a couple of homemade bombs as you could with a tank, assuming you went to a fairly crowded place. It's not like I'm advocating private ownership of nuclear weapons or whatnot.

Steven, could you recommend a particular edition of Spacetime Phyiscs please? I got one out of my local library and haven't started reading it yet but it seems a bit difficult to follow - theres loads of boxouts everywhere, and my initial impression was that it was kind of 'scattered'. Just wondering if this is the one you recommend - if it is, then I'll dive into it anyway and find out what it's like; its probably that I'm just not used to that particular style of writing/presentation. Ta.