I haven’t shared anything about the recent North Korean nuclear test. So, what do I think of the test?
Well, I’ll let The Onion does the talking for me (via):
PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA—A press release issued by the state-run Korean Central News Agency Monday confirmed that the Oct. 9 underground nuclear test in North Korea’s Yanggang province successfully exploded the communist nation’s total gross domestic product for the past four decades.
Long live communism…
I first became familiar with Professor Gregory Mankiw while I was at Michigan. I and many other economist wannabe at Michigan used his book during our macroeconomics classes. He of course became publicly prominent when he served the Council of Economic Advisers. He became more prominent (well, infamous really but that depends on your point of view; really, the point of view of most Americans at that time was increasingly protectionist) when he expressed support for outsourcing. In Friedman’s The World is Flat:
During the 2004 election campaign we saw the Democrats debating whether NAFTA was a good idea and the Bush White House putting duct tape over the mouth of N. Gregory Mankiw, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and stashing him away in Dick Cheney’s basement, because Mankiw, author of a popular college economics textbook, had dared to speak approvingly of outsourcing as just the “latest manifestation of the gains from trade that economists have talked about at least since Adam Smith.”
Mankiw’s statement triggered a competition for who could say the most ridiculous thing in response. The winner was speaker of the house Dennis Hastert, who said that Mankiw’s “theory fails a basic test of real economics.” And what test was that, Dennis? Poor Mankiw was barely heard from again.
Also, the Big Mac controversy.
When I first found out that Prof. Mankiw blogs, I became his regular reader.
Last Friday, I asked him are you a libertarian. The next day, he answered yes.
Sweet.
Jogging around the local blogosphere, I suppose me and a few other bloggers have been placed by local religious conservative bloggers within the Liberal Islam philosophical school. Though I had no qualm with it initially, I started to rethink whether that label fits me; it doesn’t.
Though these conservative Muslims have attacked the school, I had unwittingly tried to defend it despite the fact that I’m not actually in the latter group. In some cases, some conservatives attacked me on the false assumption that I’m part of Liberal Islam. My uncalculated effort to defend such philosophy hasn’t helped me in dispelling the assumption that I’m part of that loose liberal group.
In time, I’ve recognized such defense was more of a knee jerk reaction on my behalf. So, I had taken a step back and reassessed the situation. This entry will clarify some of my political stances that are relevant to the issue and explain why I don’t subscribe to Liberal Islam philosophy.
First of all, I’m a libertarian. A libertarian is a very specific branch of liberalism. It advocates that individuals should be free to do whatever they wish with their person or property, as long as they do not infringe on the same liberty of others. In short, it calls for freedom as well as respect for freedom. Libertarianism influences all aspects of my life; from economic to social beliefs. Environmentalism also influences me but that’s irrelevant to the objective of this entry.
Being a libertarian and generally a liberal, the call for free speech, etc. comes only naturally. Part of that is freedom of religion. All these are individual rights. Libertarian itself sees individual as the basic unit of a society. These rights are essential components of libertarianism. Without these rights, one’s freedom might mean less freedom for others. I’d call libertarianism as equitable freedom.
In liberalism, the state is established by its citizens to protect the citizens and their rights. The state is there to make sure those rights are not compromised by others — be it by a citizen upon another citizen or a downright infringement of sovereignty by a foreign force. Theoretically, the state is there to provide equal protect to all, hence a fair state. In a nutshell, libertarianism distributes freedom to all equally.
In one way, this grants incredible power to the state that — if it wishes to do so — it could not only not protect its citizens that established the government in the first place, the state could infringe the rights of the citizens. Hence, the question, “who will guard the guardian?”
Democracy is designed to force the state to be accountable to its citizens. It’s the guard that guards the elected guardians. Democracy unfortunately introduces tyranny of the majority. It allows the majority to infringe on the minority’s individual rights which occurs in many places, including Malaysia, France, Turkey and the United States of America. A properly written constitution might provide some safeguard against such tyranny. Alas, the constitution itself is at the mercy of the majority. This is something that still needs to be thought out soon.
Whatever needs to be thought out, apart from rationalism and empiricism, it’s the tyranny of the majority that makes me embraces secularism. Secularism helps forestall such tyranny. It’s one step towards an impartial government.
Secularism forces the state to not favor any religion at the expense of others. The state is responsible to its citizens, not to any particular group within the society. Secularism coupled with a liberal democratic system is fertile ground for a multicultural society like Malaysia.
As a secularist and a liberal, I rarely find myself talking from religious perspective. In fact, whenever I express myself in matter related to religion, it’s because the followers of religion — may it be Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. — are infringing on individual rights. An example is the enforcement of moral policing which violates common people’s privacy.
Though I’m a Muslim, I take religion as something personal. Add that on top of the libertarian-ness in me, I won’t allow others to regulate my religion or belief as long as I don’t infringe on others’ rights. I don’t mind advice but decisions on my life are mine to take and I can do whatever I like, as long as such action doesn’t affect others.
I don’t see the world through religious prism. Instead, reasons appeal to me. That explains why sometimes I’m hostile towards religious conservatives — regardless of religion — which rarely provide rationality.
Proof to this is that, while I’m philosophically hostile to conservative Muslims, I’m not fond of Christian, Hindu or Jewish zealots either. That’s why I’ve issues the Republicans Party. If it hadn’t been from the religious conservatives, part of me would probably prefer the GOP to the Democrats in the US.
In the final analysis, while a liberal, I’m not part of Liberal Islam philosophy. I’m just a liberal with a strong sense of rationalism and empiricism. I’m a humanist. Suffice to say, the concept of divine rights needs to be rationalized before it becomes rationale.
The school of Liberal Islam may share some of the schools of thought that I subscribe to, but I don’t use religion to advance liberalism. I don’t use religion to justify a lot of things; I use reasons instead. That’s why I’m not a Liberal Islam. The fact that I’m a liberal and a Muslim by birth doesn’t make me a subscriber to Liberal Islam.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
— Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, Commissioner Pravin Lal, “U.N. Declaration of Rights”
Eid Mubarak.
Disgraceful thugs embarrassing the country:
Barnhart and his wife were asleep at 2am when there was pounding on the door and male voices shouting in Bahasa Malaysia.
Fearing an attack or robbery, Barnhart told the men to go away or he would call the police.
One of the voices, speaking in English, identified the group of men as Islamic Affairs Department officers and ordered him to open the door immediately.
“I positioned myself ready to fight and partly blocking the door so I could defend myself and my wife if anything were to happen.
“Then I opened the door to find six men in my face,” said Barnhart.
Barnhart said the men wore blue jackets with the department’s crest on the breast pockets, with one of them producing an authority card.
He claimed there were no police officers with the six men.
Barnhart said one of the men yelled at him, asking how many people were in the apartment and said: “You are Muslim, we are coming in.”
“I told them we were Christians and they were not to come in. They then demanded to inspect the apartment.
“They were threatening and aggressive. Again I said no,” he said.
He said the men then demanded to see his “woman”.
I say we need to fight these thugs and take them down before they infringe our rights further.
Talking about defending liberty, I wonder, if a person tried to violate my property in the name of moral policing, and I killed the person while trying to defend my property, who would win in a court? The intruding moral police or a common person defending his rights?
p/s – The Cato Institute reports that there’s a growing libertarian influence in the United States. At the Economist (via):
AMERICA may be the land of the free, but Americans who favour both economic and social freedom have no political home. The Republican Party espouses economic freedom—ie, low taxes and minimal regulation—but is less keen on sexual liberation. The Democratic Party champions the right of homosexuals to do their thing without government interference, but not businesspeople. Libertarian voters have an unhappy choice. Assuming they opt for one of the two main parties, they can vote to kick the state out of the bedroom, or the boardroom, but not both.
In a new study from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, David Boaz and David Kirby argue that libertarians form perhaps the largest block of swing voters. Counting them is hard, since few Americans are familiar with the term “libertarian”. Mr Boaz and Mr Kirby count those who agree that “government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses”, that government, rather than promoting traditional values, “should not favour any particular set of values”, and that “the federal government has too much power”. Using data from Gallup polls, they found that, in 2005, 13% of the voting-age population shared all three views, up from 9% in 2002.
Check this paragraph:
When Republicans win elections, it is because they manage to pull together an alliance between social conservatives and libertarians. But, as Ryan Sager put it in “The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians and the Battle to Control the Republican Party”: “[L]ibertarians have always tended to see social conservatives as rubes ready to thump nonbelievers on the head with the Bible first chance they get, and social conservatives have always tended to see libertarians as dope-smoking devil-worshippers.”
In local context, this probably applicable to the UMNO-PAS tug-of-war.