I’m to some degree a liberaltarian or some such. I’m not averse to critically engaging with libertarians or libertarian thought.
Somehow, though, Reason’s writers and bloggers have this inexplicable tendency to mirror my stances on various issues despite them wielding mind-numbing arguments and/or intensely petty writing and/or clearly (cherry-picked and/or half-digested) research to reach such agreement. (This occurs mostly via Hit & Run.) How is this so? Do I need to stop caring about politics so that I may escape this sad parallel and thus maintain some fortified shred of intelligence?
Baylen Linnekin’s recent post about Mayor Bloomberg’s War on Carbonated Corn Syrup, for instance, is some asinine shit; it’s just lazy and trite. There’s a point in the post where he’s responding to Drew Magary’s argument at Gawker that no one is proposing to ban soda from New York City; and that in any case Bloomberg is making a policy proposal—so, not an edict—as a public official who has been democratically supported and (re-)elected by his city, which is basically what public officials exist to do:
So maybe it’s not such a bad thing if a city official, who was freely ELECTED by his own constituents, tries his best to curb its influence. It doesn’t make this country a member of the Warsaw Pact if that happens. And if you want to go crying about a NANNY STATE or whatever other dipshit talking point Politico fed you, go right ahead. Sometimes, voters like being nannied. In this country, you are FREE to vote for a little nannying if you like. Now go buy a cold can of Dr. Pepper and jam it up your butt.
Linnekin’s thoughtful response to Magary’s post?
So. Dumb.
That’s it. I’m not contorting this or making it up; that’s the entirety of dude’s counter-point to an 844-word post: a pithy, truncated sermon to his choir.
Whatever—what bothers me here is that Reason is the editorial standard-bearer of libertarian thought in the U.S. Which is to say: Libertarians in the U.S. need better scribes.
