How to Start a Movement

Fun video from TED with important implications for libertarians:

Behind the Moral Curtain

I’m slow in posting this video of Elise Parham presenting her monograph Behind the Moral Curtain: The Politics of a Charter of Rights. The paper and video are both well worth checking out. Astute viewers may even be able to spot the back of my head in the video.

Elise’s argument is that bills of rights are fundamentally political, rather than legal, documents. This is true in the sense that rights will be interpreted and enforced based on political expediency and prevailing ideologies, as Robert Higgs and others have argued. Elise’s argument is that the writing of a bill of rights is also political. Once a government decides to draft a charter, many competing interests will compete to have their preferences reflected and the end result is unlikely to be a liberal document. Rather, we’ll end up with a whole lot of illiberal, and constitutionally protected, positive rights.

Wiggling it Around in Excrement

Some family-values conservative explains how gay male sex works:

Hat tip: Xaq Fixx.

Green Police

A glimpse of the future from Audi’s Superbowl ad:

Hat tip: In The Agora.

UK Cop Detains and Beats Photographer for Acting “Cocky”

Prepare to get angry:

Hat tip: Boing Boing

Me is Mine, You is Yours

Cute, though not completely historically accurate, video [hat tip: MCLA]:

Not quite as good as this classic, of course:

Smoking is Gay

This video from The Onion is funny, but not too far from the reality of current campaigns (Hat tip: Balko).

Many PSAs aim to stigmatize smokers rather than inform people of health risks of smoking. I’ve always hated New Zealand’s Not Our Future campaign for this reason. They’ve just started running some new ads. The message of one is a pretty clear: “If you smoke, you won’t get laid.” It seems to ask local two-bit celebrities (both male and female) whether they’d go out with a smoker. The responses are what you’d expect: “Hell no!” “It’s unattractive” “It stinks.”

They have a shitty site, so I can’t link to it directly, but you can watch it by going to videos (TV in lower left corner), adverts, advert 1.  If anyone finds a linkable or embeddable version, please let me know in the comments.

Documentary Series on New Zealand’s Free-Market Reforms

The excellent 1996 documentary series Revolution is now available to watch online at NZ on Screen. I may be biased, but I see the reforms which took place here in the 1980s and ’90s as one of the most interesting series of political events in recent world political history. I haven’t seen the series in a few years, so I’ll give it another watch sometime soon.

It’s worth the price of admission to see a drunk Robert Muldoon call an early election, alone.

Hat tip: KiwiBlog

Police State – The Militarization of the Police Force in USA

Inside the Mind of a Politician: Taxation is Voluntary

Something about withholding taxes. I don’t get it.

It’s possible to support government without being a complete moron. Denying that government is force is not the way to do it.

Hat tip: The Peace, Freedom and Prosperity Movement.