As I see it, abortion is a subset of the libertarian problem of dealing with children.  Children do not enter the parent-child relationship though consent, and sexual activities that can produce a third non-consenting human are therefore not simply private affairs that involve only consenting adults.

So I would like to see the discussion encompass a libertarian understanding of parents and children.  Without that understanding, I am afraid that tackling abortion will simply involve talking past one another.

I also thought it was wonderful.  

Gasoline is dense, safe, and we have a distribution network already in place.

And, if we do somehow make it to a future of plentiful cheap (probably nuclear) energy, we can capture CO2 from the air and upconvert it to make gasoline, not just refine it from fossil fuels.

Green Freedom.

I am have downloaded the audio files and I m excited to listen to them during my commute.

<begin whining> But I question their choice of the .aif audio file format for spoken word.  This may be a superior audio format, but I won't notice the difference in the car, at a cost of 10 times the download time and 10 times the storage space on my phone.

The latter problem is ameliorated by using avconv to convert to an .mp3 format, but the downloads are still slow.  </whining>

Jim, would you challenge beliefs simply because they are supported by a religious belief?  

If my religion says that murder is wrong, does my voting for laws against murder make me the kind of person who wants to impose his beliefs on someone exercising their legal right to shoot bullets wherever they want?

It's not that I think you can't question a policy of mine that happens to come from a religious conviction.  Please do, and it would be great if you actually engaged the belief itself and not just its appeal to some block of voters.

I do object, however, to the idea that religion has no place in the public square.

I find the similarities very striking.  In both slavery and abortion, the question hinges on who is a human deserving our protection, and who is not.  Also, there are competing rights involved:  if you do not see that slave as human, then the abolitionist is infringing your right to private property.  If you do not see the unborn as human, the pro-life movement is infringing on your right to privacy.

I pray we will look back and wonder how people could have behaved so badly.

In ten murderous minutes, the gunman at Sandyhook just managed to kill innocents at a rate (2.7 per minute) maintained 8 hours a day,  5 days a week, 50 weeks a year by Planned Parenthood.

This statement is incendiary and probably unhelpful, but I honestly don't understand my friends who are justly outraged by Sandyhook and yet are staunch supporters of PP.  

I would like to change hearts and minds, but I am at a loss:  how is it that they are not outraged?

After a long hiatus, I recently started wearing a wristwatch again.  I think I like this Traser because, well, it's radioactive.  I don't think you can get the radium-painted dial watches anymore, but this watch has four small vials of tritium happily beta-decaying so that I can read my watch in the dark of the early morning.

There might be a conflict of visions at the heart of the disagreement.

This seems to be yet another case of the perfect being the enemy of the good.  In order to pursue a world of perfect gun-free peace, they act against a better world where fewer die.

I was tickled when I first saw this, and so I feel the need to repeat it here:

Polyamory is just wrong.  Polyphilia, maybe, or multiamory, but mixing Latin and Greek roots is just wrong!

I agree, and this is why I think the `civil rights' argument for an expansion of who can marry will be a Pyrrhic victory at best for its enthusiasts.  I believe that it is the societal respect that is perceived to come with marriage that they seek.

But no one has a right to someone else's good opinion.  

So, I am pessimistic.  I think that the civil rights argument for SSM will prevail, but as it has no limiting principle, in the end no association will ultimately be excluded from being a `marriage'.  What will then be lost is the societal respect for marriage that was sought in the first place.

And it will be lost for all marriages.

I worry that the very premise of Ms. Hemmingway's post, that there is a we that should pay for what we want, is exactly what I fear is lost.

When a voting majority thinks that it is voting for someone else to pay for what it wants, the American idea of a self-governing people is gone.  Whatever arguments one may make for a steeply progressive tax structure, it is corrosive of the democratic ideals of a government of, by, and for the people.

If by raise taxes you mean have all share the burden of paying for those things that benefit us all, then I could be for it, even if government seems the worst way to do most of these things.

But when 60% of what we are paying for are transfer payments from one citizen to another, then this is just the tyranny of the majority that the founders feared.

Nice while it lasted.

I think the question was supposed to pitch a reality-and-science based worldview against a faith-based worldview.  It is supposed to elicit an answer based on backward religion and paint the respondent as non-thinking.

And the irony is that I am sure that the interviewer accepts the scientific estimate on the basis of authority.  If pressed to come up with an estimate and defend it, I am certain that the interviewer could not.  Not that there is no argument that would be persuasive, but the interviewer really can't reproduce the argument, and holds on faith that the scientists can.

I so want him to turn the tables on the questioner.

"Oh, this is a science quiz, not a political interview.  Great.  I love science.  What is the lifetime of the neutron?  Within an order of magnitude would be fine.  You don't know?  No guess?  OK.  Want to go back to the political interview?  Good."

I wonder if this gizmo would work:

https://www.tvbgone.com/cfe_tvbg_main.php