All Thoughts Being Equal

Earlier this month, Jordan Weissmann at Slate 's Moneybox column wrote two interesting—and highly disturbing—pieces on the material nature of poverty in the United States. The first details why poverty is still miserable , and the second includes graphs on how the poor spend their income . Both are well worth the time to read in full. And they're important, because it's not hard at all to hear a curious sort of reasoning in favor of this status quo from the likes of FOX News . On the July 19, 2011 edition of Your World With Neil Cavuto , guest host Stuart Varney and guest Robert Rector discussed the following statistics about America's poor families, and how the "definition of poor families [isn't] what it used to be":

I. Once, a long time from now, there was a village. The people who lived in this village were mostly happy. Everyone generally had enough to eat, comfortable clothes and shoes, a nice place to sleep, and plenty of ways to enjoy their lives. But theirs was not a perfect life. Occasionally there would befall the village some mysterious tragedy. A person might go missing, or an otherwise healthy child might suddenly become ill and die. These events were sad, but they were rare and mysterious. The villagers mourned the loss of their kin, but everyone said that sometimes these Mysterious Evils happened and that was the way of the world. Then, one day, a stranger appeared at the village gates. He wore a very strange mask, and his hands and feet were tightly wrapped, but otherwise spoke the local language and was exceedingly polite. Nervous, but never one to turn away visitors, the village admitted the stranger. He immediately went to the public square and began speaking, seemingly to the...

It's time again for some musings on social justice, culture, and the culture wars. Where did we leave off...

Reason magazine has a great piece by Sheldon Richman on the theme of 'thick' versus 'thin' libertarianism. It's worth the whole read, but this comment on the article grabbed my attention in particular: Because there are two ways to arrive at libertarianism - two distinct methods. One method is to arrive at libertarianism by way of doubt . You can say, "I don't think anyone can overcome the Hayekian information problem in economic policy. I also don't think anyone can ever conclusively devise an exhaustive set of moral norms. Further, I think that the people who occupy government positions are incredibly fallible, and we need to diminish their ability to impose their fallibility on others, by procedural and other means." But the other way is to arrive at something that looks a lot like libertarianism by way of certainty . (The Objectivists are the best known example of this.) You say, "I know exactly what is right and wrong, and among t...