I’m granting James Lileks a blanket pardon for his regrettable dream post.

Why the uncharacteristic leniency? Check out his Dean Remix.

The highlight of the night was Dean’s post caucus performance. Did anyone else get the sense he smoked a big bowl of crack before giving his speech?

I’m unmoved by the recent pother concerning Bush’s proposal to use government as a matchmaking service.

As was the case with the widely lambasted “midnight basketball” programs of the 90’s, a marriage skills training program for low income Americans could enjoy a limited success. It obviously doesn’t merit the $1.5 billion price tag. And while money not collected by the government doesn’t necessarily equal money spent by the government, neither can a consistent case be made that the social engineering incentives inherent in the tax codes merit the gouging of single taxpayers in order to pull in the revenue slack of joint married filers.

The government already subsidizes state marriage to the tune of tens of billions a year. Bush is proposing that another $1.5 billion go toward more social engineering. That comes as no surprise or particular disappointment to me. I’m duly underwhelmed by the collective mewling about it by nerf libertarians and commie Republicans who would happily enslave their neighbors before loosening their death grips on their own favorite government programs.

It’s not the government’s lookout to enhance or discourage personal relationships, in any way and until you recognize the fact that the state has no place, whatsoever, in the private business of marital bliss or discord, then you have no valid grievance against it picking your pockets to implement such “services” as midnight marriage coaching. If you are an advocate of government recognized marriages, you begat this larcenous nonsense. You set the stage for this atrocity. You told Bush that you want the government to act on your behalf to shakedown the unwilling to promote your ideals and Bush listened.

“Administration officials say they are planning an extensive election-year initiative to promote marriage, especially among low-income couples, and they are weighing whether President Bush should promote the plan next week in his State of the Union address.

For months, administration officials have worked with conservative groups on the proposal, which would provide at least $1.5 billion for training to help couples develop interpersonal skills that sustain ‘healthy marriages.’ “

Colby Cosh correctly dismisses the invalid pro-immigration argument that immigrants take jobs that Americans are unwilling to do. The correct argument against job protectionism is that it violates the rights of American employers. Why shouldn’t they be permitted to offer their money to whomever they can come to voluntary terms with?

Jobs belong to the people offering them.

Today a reader drew my attention to David Irving’s Action Report On-line. The main page of the site currently bears the message:

We apologise for the interruption to website service today Thursday, January 15, 2004: this was caused by legal interference from LewRockwell.com

I was not familiar with David Irving; he appears to be a crank. I found no explanation for the nature of the claimed interference so I did a search of the domain. I found this page which comments by Irving on the right and this text in the left column:

The item on which this column commented, a short article by Lew Rockwell, has been removed from the website at the insistence of Kinsella, Rockwell’s attorney.

Stephan Kinsella? I don’t know that Stephan Kinsella is Rockwell’s attorney but he is certainly an attorney who writes for Rockwell.

Here is an archived version of the page with the original LRC material. What the current page characterizes as a short article by Lew Rockwell is this blog entry by Lew Rockwell. In his comments I see nothing from Irving about Rockwell’s piece, he apparently used the Rockwell piece as a jumping off point.

So what happened here? It sounds like Action Report On-line was briefly taken down as a result of legal action taken or threatened by LRC via Stephan Kinsella. It sounds like Rockwell didn’t like seeing his blog entry on a crackpot site and sought to legally exercise his intellectual property rights to the material.

I certainly understand why Rockwell would take such action. His piece was framed on ARO in a manner that could easily lead a visitor to believe that Rockwell contributed an article to the site. I recognize that Rockwell has a right to his work which entails a right to prevent it from being used on ARO in that manner.

But does Rockwell have a principled leg to stand on in making such a claim? He routinely publishes, promotes and praises articles arguing against intellectual property rights in principle. He has characterized intellectual property rights as “coercive monopolies for particular producers in rich countries”. If that’s so than wouldn’t invoking IP rights himself amount to enforcing a monopoly of a particular producer?

It’s clear that Stephan Kinsella would have to abandon his philosophical principles to pursue such a claim. I’ve written about this problem for Kinsella here and here. Kinsella has been quite explicit on the matter of intellectual property:

One thing that is striking about advocating intellectual property rights–rights in non-scarce things–is that one is inevitably bound up in a self-contradictory position. For although they want to say that non-scarce things (like ideas, inventions, etc.) are “just as much property” as are scarce things like physical resources, they always, when it comes down to it, want to enforce IP rights against scarce resources.

If Kinsella is correct that intellectual property rights do no exist then he would do wrong to invoke force to secure such fictions.

Kinsella attempted to harmonize his position on intellectual property with his actions before:

Surely it is not inconsistent to drive on public roads, avail oneself of public military, police & fire department services, use public libraries, attend public schools, fly on a publicly-inspected airplane, eat publicly-inspected food, and so on, by virtue of opposing such public functions. If so, what is the argument that it is is “inconsistent” to oppose IP but to recognize the legal terrain we actually have to cope with?

Again, here’s the difference: In the absence of government interference it would be perfectly moral to procure any of these goods or services in a free market. By his own moral theory intellectual property rights are a fiction and Kinsella could have no exclusive right to any intellectual product in a free market.

His dream is to put a Navajo on Mars. And you get to to pay for it:

I have a dream. I believe that this nation should put a man on the moon by the end of this decade and keep him there. Not because it is easy, but because it is hard and expensive and boring and lethal and just might � might � give people something to watch that’s more important than Paris Hilton pitching a fit because she chipped a nail.

I appreciate the concern for my welfare but actually I wasn’t having any difficulty finding better things to do with my time than watching Paris Hilton on TV.

Lileks:

Whatever. Fact: In the middle of a war against medieval-minded foes, we decided that we should also head back into space.

No, we decided nothing of the sort. I wouldn’t voluntarily contribute a dime to NASA.

I have a dream: That Lileks and his collectivist brethren will pay for their own dreams.

As I observed some years ago, John T. Kennedy is a Rat Terrier. I could go on, but the Rat Terrier Club of America describes him best.

“The Rat Terrier is an American breed that originated from a mixture of crosses by early immigrants of this country… Bred primarily for farm and ranch dogs to hunt, protect and guard against vermin and varmints, Rat Terriers have strong jaws and are known for their quick, agile movements, which enable them to kill rats and other vermin and small game… These early crosses eventually gave the breed the speed and “nose”, as well as the good disposition they are known for today. A non-sparing, playful, happy-go-lucky, devoted companion that is also protective, and yet can be aloof with strangers. They are an efficient, intuitive hunter as well as an energetic and intelligent companion, at home in the city or country.”

In other words, if you find yourself cornered, you’d best pack a lunch because it will be a long day.

That’s the supposed smear Lew Rockwell is complaining about here.

But today Lew promotes a VDARE piece by LRC contributor Paul Gottfried that does just that:

But Podhoretz and his fellow-neoconservatives have their own trauma to deal with. They are basically descended from Eastern European Jews who settled in our multiethnic cities in the first half of the twentieth century and, as Podhoretz intimates, still feel reservations about the Republicans as a WASP nativist party.