Liberal Talk Radio

On this, the week of Iraqi elections, this image seemed poignant: I was at Seattle’s wonderful MOHAI museum yesterday, where they have an exhibit celebrating the first round-the-world flight, in 1924, which took off from Seattle. One of the pilots wrote this passage in his journal en route from Belgrade to Baghdad. In case you [...]

Iraqi elections were a sight to behold yesterday. Cheers to the Iraqi people for standing up to the insurgents and voting. They want control of their country back. They want the U.S. out. And yesterday they just took a big step towards showing us the door. I know it’s been making the rounds, but this [...]

Ben Franklin said, famously, “beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy.” This was a rallying cry for the fraternities at my Franklin-founded alma matter. Now we have conformation: Beer saves lives. Happy Friday.

Can’t believe I’m getting dragged into this one … Bruno, I agree that any position based solely on morality is ultimately indefensible in the context of liberal democracy. Here’s what I say about abortion. IF: 1) There was no violence against women AND IF: 2) The costs of motherhood (and parenthood) were not perceived to [...]

Need to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s today, but when a certain Virginian calls me out on health care, I’m honor-bound to respond. Ryan writes: “Isn’t the fact that corporations are taking over where the government would not an example of the market correcting its own failure?” My answer: Yes! Absolutely! My point was [...]

As I should have expected, my go-to guy on moral relativism comes down on the correct side of the slant w.r.t. our little abortion debate: And if you look at it that way, you can say: should the government be in the business of regulating tragedy? Or should government make an effort, as we do [...]

Matski, you write: Our moral judgements, which are based on our religious beliefs, should not influence public policy. While that’s impossible to accomplish in practice, it’s something that we all need to be mindful of, and it’s ultimately what separates progressives from Radical Republicans. But once we define something as a moral wrong, it seems [...]

Bruno: I think Kerry had it right. Not everyone shares our view that abortion is a tragedy (or maybe a better way to put it is that for some, the alternatives are less moral and therefore abortion is preferrable). So we can defend the rights of people to have abortions in the same way that [...]

As longtime readers will note, Matski believes there are only two proper reasons for the existence of government — to correct market failure, and to enforce contracts, including the social contract. For us in the U.S., part of our social contract is that all of us should have an equal opportunity to accomplish our goals [...]

“However, if America wants the rest of the world to be part of the agenda it has set, it must be part of their agenda too.” – Tony Blair. This and other wondeful quotes available here. More proof why Tony is the MAN. More proof why pro-democratic internationalism is best conducted by left-of-center pragmatists and [...]