I wonder if there has ever been a better time to have kids than today. The 20th century began with the first world war, followed by a second world war, a near nuclear cold war and many other wars in between. The worst half century in mankind's history didn't stop the baby boomers that it preceded. Isn't it odd that having reached such extraordinary prosperity and relative world peace we are increasingly hesitant to "bring children into this world"? Yes, things may well get a bit worse in the future, but surely the times ahead will be significantly superior to the vast majority of history.

But the argument that the "Human Rights" of a woman ought to trump the rights of an unborn child is a moral argument. In doing so, they must argue that not all human beings are equally deserving of rights and that the unborn are inferior in this sense. Needless to say, slavery and the holocaust were based on a similar premise. 

Even if one takes a sceptical position when it comes to when life begins, it seems bizarre to conclude that abortion is morally permissible. It is akin to the hunter who sees something moving in the trees and, not sure whether it is a human or a deer, shoots! So the onus is on the pro-choicer to show that the fetus in the womb is not a human being.

Best pairing yet.

I understand that libertarians and social conservatives will generally tend to disagree on SSM, but why would they on abortion? The libertarian maxim of individual liberty constrained only by the right thereto of everyone else is quite in line with the pro-life position. This is why Rand Paul is one of the most ardent champions of the pro-life cause, while supporting a retreat of government from marriage altogether. 
Getting back to the topic. While conservatives are increasingly fretting that the marriage battle is a lost cause, I would caution that even if it is, it does not follow that social-conservatism as a whole should be abandoned by the GOP. The pro-life movement is on the up, particularly among the young, and it would be a tremendous blunder to mistake the apparently increasing popularity of SSM for a general shift of the electorate to the left on social issues.

I would think that Charles Krauthammer's essay on what he views as the four schools of foreign policy would be very well suited to your purposes. http://www.aei.org/files/2004/03/01/20040227_book755text.pdf

1. Age: 21

I too take issue with the phrasing, however. I do not think that gays are evil and although I do think that gay sex is a "vice", that is not why I hold this position. 

The first sentence is so beautiful and so fitting, if only he were talking about the need and indeed obligation to tackle the federal debt. By taking any meaningful cuts to social security and medicare off the table in the same speech, Obama has stated his clear intent to pass the burden of financing current consumption on to our children.

Giving our children a higher standard of living will not be achieved by an expensive and necessarily ineffective pursuit of "green" policies, but rather by setting the next generation free from the shackles of their parents' bad spending habits.

His assertion that "we cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries" is patently ridiculous. The very pursuit of such technologies in the form of subsidies and over-regulation of competing products will result in this very loss of competitive advantage to other nations.  

 I think that's a false dichotomy. A  fiscal conservative like Milton Friedman understood that capitalism is better at making people wealthier. But he then argued that this fact makes capitalism morally superior. So one may understand that capitalism is economically more efficient, but it takes a further step of moral reasoning to conclude that this makes capitalism superior to some form of collectivism.

Furthermore, I would point out that libertarians, by definition, hold position based on the fundamentally moral principle of liberty. I am disappointed when my fellow libertarians then reject the notion of morality as if it were some dirty word.

I take issue with your analysis of the abortion issue. On the one hand, you categorize Roe v. Wade as a "constitutional fabrication", yet you argue that it would be a mistake to pursue a reversal of that decision, since the legality of abortion over 40 years "has produced a stable set of expectations that would be shattered in unpredictable ways if the issue went to the states." Perhaps you could elaborate on what you mean by "a stable set of expectations" and why upsetting these expectations should hinder a future Supreme Court from overturning "a constitutional fabrication".

Or maybe someone here can point me to some more extensive analysis of the Professor on this issue.

This is too funny. A caveat of an Obama victory on Tuesday would be 4 more years of Biden gaffes.

When the unemployment rate drops from 8.1% to 7.8% in one month, but rises again to 7.9% the next month, despite recording more jobs growth than the previous month, you know that the U-3 unemployment rate is a completely useless economic indicator. The U-6 rate is the real unemployment rate. Though it has decreased from last month, at 14.6% it remains nearly 60% higher than when Obama took office. That is the record of the last 4 years.

Dinesh 2020! (Yes I know, born in India; I think we should change that rule)

I ended my subscription this summer. Having "no love for big government" and being in favour of Obamacare are mutually exclusive positions. The views of a magazine so evidently confused in its ideology is not worth the paper that it's written on. 

I get your mixed feelings about Hurricane Sandy. I feel kind of guilty myself about the fact that I hope that Friday's jobs report is  terrible.

Hilarious. Thank you for posting.