When I began this post Saturday morning, I never imagined that news would so soon make sad brothers of Pakistan and the United States in the area of recent, tragic assassinations. Later that very day, last Saturday, an apparently crazy man opened fire on a crowd at a political event in Tucson, Arizona (Southwestern US), [...]
A discussion of the effects of blasphemy laws on freedom of speech and religion.
Here I discuss freedom of speech and the best tactics for those who find particular speech offensive, using the so-called ground-zero mosque and earlier-planned book burnings by a Florida church as examples.
We all have in our heads ideas for how the world works, ideas about human nature, about politics and economics, ideas that we believe explain the world, or some part of the world, more or less. There is some satisfaction in feeling we understand the way the world works, that we know “truth.” Most models [...]
In Part 1 of this pair of blogs, I discussed the similarities between human cancers and certain dangerous, violent national movements. I discussed what made a movement cancerous, and I invited comments in particular regarding whether Pakistanis believe that the Pakistani Taliban meets my definition of a cancerous national movement, with the frightening danger to [...]
As far as I know, I do not have cancer, but over two years ago, cancer struck to the heart of my family, and it profoundly affects our daily lives, today. I don’t want this blog to be about me, however, and I must protect the privacy of others, so I won’t go into personal [...]
A discussion of why some economic activity risks the wealth of persons other than the people making the risk choices, and why this fact creates a need for higher levels of government regulation of that sort of economic activity.
My first political blog, here on Pakspectator, dealt with An American Perspective on the US Courts, in the US, in July, 2007. At the time, Pakistan had recently seen its Supreme Court judges removed from power, so my blog described the powers of the US Supreme Court, as well as limits to those powers from [...]
I once promised in these pages never to argue against any reader’s religion. While I intend to keep that promise, and I hope you do not feel this article breaks that promise, whatever your religion, I would like to humbly offer some thoughts on religion that I hope do not offend and that I hope [...]
Over a year ago, in Habit’s Impact on Freedom, I discussed ways that habit and custom constrain our freedom, sometimes harmfully, and sometimes in constructive ways, but generally in ways that are independent of governments. Today, I would like to discuss in particular how habit tends to constrain governments, especially regarding the size of military [...]
