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A Non-Libertarian FAQ

Libertarianism is one of the more popular utopian schemes to emerge in the last twenty years. My rather simple understanding of it boils down to one phrase: the free market cures all ills. Suggestions to the contrary tend to garner immediate and vehement (Hi, Denis!) reaction. I have lots of reasons to have more faith in the government than I do in corporations. One is that government is meant to represent us all, while corporations don't have to answer to anyone but their stockholders. Another is that government -- at least those that pretend to follow democratic ideals -- can be changed with every election until the people find themselves with representation that satisfies them. With businesses, your only hope is either to find another corporation that doesn't follow the same business practices or go without. I ran across a very useful site that pulls no punches in critiquing the libertarian mindset, and offers some very interesting responses to Libertarian evangelism ....
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Relevant Quotations

Someone in reddit did a nice job of compiling some quotations from our nation's Founding Fathers regarding the roles of Church and State. It's the most diverse list of quotations I've come across in a while, so I bookmarked it and thought I'd share it here. 1797 Treaty of Tripoli (Article 11) - The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. Benjamin Franklin - Lighthouses are more helpful than churches. Benjamin Franklin - The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. George Washington - Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. James Madison - During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution. James Madison...
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No More NOMA

There's a problem with Stephen Jay Gould's ill-considered "non-overlapping magisteria." The problem is that it was never true. Religion has been making claims about reality since its inception. It's been giving ground on those claims for centuries because its claims are unsupportable. As Jerry Coyne is reported to have said, "when something in science is disproven it get tossed on the junkpile of bad ideas. When something in religion gets disproven it becomes a metaphor." Religious beliefs make claims that compete with science all the time. The most glaring ones involve evolution denial and creationism and are easily disputed by evidence. The more subtle ones merely claim a deist god or a magical energy field that powers our consciousness. All of them make claims about reality and when we turn our skepticism toward them we're inundated with protests that it's not something we can be skeptical about. It's not subject to scrutiny or evidence...
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