Better late than never. Nick Milne tagged me while I was on vacation. The rules:
1. Link the person(s) who tagged you
2. Mention the rules on your blog
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours
4. Tag 6 fellow bloggers by linking them
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger's blogs letting them know they've been tagged
Six unspectacular quirks (which I'll interpret as six peculiar traits). Hmmmmm, here goes: (1) I like to wear female underwear and bras. (2) In men's rooms, I . . .
Okay, seriously, six quirks: (1) Faced with rapidly-thinning hair and a father who was bald by age 22, at age 20 I started (i) rotating shampoos, (ii) using protein conditions (which I rubbed into my scalp in odd ways), and washing my hair with cold water only. Twenty-two years later, I'm still balding and not bald and I still follow the same routine. (2) I triple check appliances and door locks before leaving for overnight trips. (3) I like to dance, though I have no skills whatsoever unless you count moonwalking. (4) I have a large family and an even larger library/study. I keep both locked in my basement. (5) I enjoy weekday Masses and try to attend every day (albeit usually arriving late), but dislike and have to drag myself to the obligatory weekend ones. (6) I wear a pedometer and am rather obsessed with it.
I tag Tim J., Bill, Sean, Trubador, John, and Steve.
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I flirt with anarchism (maybe I should've added that as a quirk above). I find the anarcho-capitalist arguments advanced by Murray Rothbard clever, often compelling, always fodder for thinking in general and thinking specifically about how modern government has gone so terribly out of control with power. That being said, I've never bought into it, something is always missing (I swear Rothbard makes tremendous leaps in logic at times, but I'm hesitant to make such a fundamental criticism about such an intelligent man). Anyway, Taki is hosting a symposium on sovereignty. Thomas Woods apparently took the anarchist position. John Zmirak responded. I haven't read all of Woods' piece yet (but will, carefully, this evening), but Zmirak's is excellent. If you're into this type of thing, check it out.
I especially liked Zmirak's distillation of Catholic political philosophy:
[T]his should make anyone sympathetic to Lord Acton's classical liberalism, and the decentralist aspirations of Chesterton–embodied so well in the localist institutions that still keep Switzerland free. It should move us to root for regionalists in Flanders, and support a state's rights approach to changing abortion laws. We ought to take with great seriousness the doctrine at the heart of Catholic social teaching called subsidiarity, which asserts that it is a sin to centralize power unless it is absolutely necessary. While I wouldn't try telling this to the mitred Democratic party hacks who issue bishops' pastorals, this is the real political tradition of the Church, with its roots in the decentralized order of the Middle Ages, where kings' aspirations were checked by the rights of free cities and regions, and the moral force of the Church.
