I am the faculty advisor for the Florida State University Students for Liberty. I am guessing that is the reason I received an email from the FSU Students for Democratic Society which says, in part: Anyone who has been following Donald Trump’s campaign has seen examples of Trump’s racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic, far-right ideology....
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[See Part 1 Here] Besides handing down the vote to Leave the EU, the June 23rd Brexit referendum also demonstrated that the UK is a house divided. The vote itself was fairly narrow: 52% vs. 48%. Northern Ireland (NI), Scotland and London had clear majorities for Remain, but much of the rest of England...
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As Americans move closer to November’s elections, the campaigns are gearing up to tell each of us how important it is to vote. One illustration is a recent Michael Barone article titled “A very few votes can make a big, big difference.” Barone makes his point by citing several close elections. Most prominent was...
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Do election results reflect voter preferences? No one seems to think so, despite most people’s enthusiasm for democracy. Consider the analysis of the recent US midterm elections. The Democratic narrative is that the voters enthusiastically chose Barack Obama and the Democrats in 2008 because they were “hungry for change,” and supported the main points...
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One of the features of secret ballot elections is that they make it difficult for voters to sell their votes. Even if a voter wants to, and finds a willing buyer, the secret ballot means the voter cannot offer any proof that the voter actually voted the way the vote buyer wanted. Absentee ballots...
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Here Is the Final Part Continued from Part 2: Part 1 Scientism For Lewis, science should be a quest for knowledge, and his concern was that in the modern era science is too often used instead as a quest by some for power over others. Lewis did not dispute that science is an immensely...
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Continued from Part 1: Part 3 Moral Relativism and Utilitarianism Of central importance in Lewis’s discussion of natural law is his critique of the moral relativism of utilitarianism (“the end justifies the means”) as a theory of ethics and guide to behavior. Lewis claimed that the precepts of moral ethics cannot just be innovated...
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X : I will serve the people of this district to the best of my ability. Y: I intend to look out for my own interest every step of the way, so unless you’re the highest bidder for my services, you’d better start saying your prayers now. * * * X: The people have...
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“Lawmakers, read the bills before you vote,” by Jeff Jacoby (Boston Globe) This “Read the Bills” movement has finally cut through political pretensions to reveal that there is no “deliberative democracy” in the USA. Apparently, members of Congress are simply asked to “react” or express “feelings” or channel interest-group concerns about broad notions like...
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My title is taken from my review of Timothy Besley’s book, Principled Agents? The Political Economy of Good Government, which appeared in the June 2009 issue of The Review of Austrian Economics. The reasoning behind my title is that the institutional structure of democratic politics puts elected representatives who act on their principles at...
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