This is one of the more interesting articles I have read in a while: a Libertarian agnostic makes the case that social conservatives and the “religious right” promote more liberty than social liberals. Here’s the money paragraph:

The most obvious point to me is that it is the do-gooding liberals who are telling us all what we can and can’t do. The religious right usually just wants to be left alone, either to home school, pray in public or not get their children vaccinated with who-knows-what. Inasmuch as the “religious right” wants some things outlawed, they have failed miserably for at least the last 50 years. Abortion, sodomy, and pornography are now all Constitutional rights. However, praying in public school is outlawed, based on that same Constitution.

I don’t completely agree with this writer’s take. It was primarily the “religious right” that has basically decreed that a Mormon cannot be president. Still, I think he makes some interesting points, and I found his perspective refreshing.

Really. In this New York Times article, Mitt says no to the proposed bailout. He’s right, of course. Any bailout now is like putting a bandaid on a chest wound.

Instead, I say let the auto industry suffer from its poor management decisions over the last three decades. Yes, it will mean the loss of probably three million jobs and huge pension obligations in the short term. But as this highly pessimistic study shows, by 2011 most of the people who lose their jobs will find employment elsewhere. That’s the way the market works.

A bailout for Detroit will only keep in place an unsustainable cost structure, as Mitt indicates in the attached.

This article points out the heavy Church involvement in the Prop 8 effort, points out Bro. Ashton’s large donation to protect marriage and in effect says that Church members were the key factor in making sure Prop. 8 won.

Also, please note this release from the Church, which says “people of faith have been intimidated for simply exercising their democratic rights.”

I encourage everybody to listen to this interview with Orson Scott Card, the LDS author of “Ender’s Game” and many other books.  He has written a sequel to “Ender’s Game” called “Ender in Exile.”

OSC never ceases to surprise me. He is a Democrat, a self-described “communitarian” who favors the Iraq war, opposes SSM and opposes Mitt Romney. He also says something very profound: African-Americans and women can aspire to be the president of the United States, but a Mormon cannot because of the smears of Mike Huckabee and his ilk. Interesting stuff.

Some people may have noticed that the market has tanked even more since Obama was elected. The Dow has lost 14 percent since the election, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are also sharply off.

The Wall Street Journal points out that many investors are paralyzed by the idea that Obama will raise taxes in a down market, about the worst thing you can do for an economy. But I still have hope Obama will be pragmatic. When I think about Obama, I keep on thinking about Lula, the popular president in Brazil who started out as a wild-eyed radical and became a moderate, business-oriented centrist once he faced the realities of governing.

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