Presenting philosophical ideas to a general audience is a huge challenge. This is particularly true when the ideas that we are presenting challenge the audience’s views and beliefs. One of the most effective ways to do this is to concretize—to present examples that the audience can understand and relate to. It is easy to make…
Last week, Houston City Council passed the controversial Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO). The ordinance makes it “unlawful for any place of public accommodation or any employee or agent thereof to discriminate against any person on the basis of any protected characteristic,” such as sexual orientation or gender identification. As is usually the case, debate…
This past week, Arizona lawmakers passed a bill that would allow business owners to refuse service to gays if the owner does so on religious grounds. Critics of the bill argue that it will allow businesses to legally discriminate against gays and will open the door to legalizing other forms of discrimination. As is so…
A City of Houston ordinance bans the sale of alcohol within 300 feet of churches and most private schools, or within 1,000 feet of public schools. Apparently, city leaders believe that the sale of alcohol is a threat to the well-being of children and church goers. However, it would seem that that threat does not…
In its never ending quest to expand government power, the Chronicle calls for Texas legislators to re-regulate the state’s electricity providers. Electrical deregulation, the paper tells us, has not been economically beneficial to consumers: Light bills in areas such as Austin and San Antonio, where service continues to be regulated, are lower. In deregulated areas…
In 1993, during the final months of the last attempt to bring zoning to Houston, I gave a talk to the Houston Property Rights Association titled “Winning the Battle but Losing the War.” In the talk, I warned that without a moral defense of property rights, we might defeat the upcoming referendum, but zoning advocates…
A liberal friend was recently lamenting personnel decisions being made at her workplace. I pointed out that, in a free market, irrational decisions are ultimately punished in the marketplace. But, she replied, most people aren’t rational, and therefore we need regulations to protect individuals from the irrational. While I would agree that her premise—most people…
With the government shutdown entering its second week, the blame game is reaching new heights. In the Washington Post, Ezra Klein lists thirteen reasons why Washington is failing. The biggest reason, according to Klein, is that Systems like our own have a broad tendency toward instability and partisan conflict because a democratically elected executive can come…
In his comments on the eve of the government shutdown, Obama stated that “one faction of one party in one house of Congress in one branch of government doesn’t get to shut down the entire government just to refight the results of an election.” Ironically, the President himself is fighting the results of an election….