dlamming's Latest Idiocy

At the risk of doubling his daily hits up to a whopping 26 for the day, I can't help but respond to the latest rank stupidity emanating from our old pal dlamming. This glutton for punishment keeps taking brave leaps in the dark, and keeps landing with a resounding thud. He is responding to my post about the growing nanny state. On the matter of the Arkansas example, he ducks right into the punch and says that he does support a law that would prevent taking a child to McDonald's:

Actually, that doesn't sound like a bad idea - maybe it should be a crime to take kids to McDonald's. We don't let children buy alcohol - and long term, fast food might overall be even worse.

But why stop at McDonald's? There's plenty of junk food in the home as well. Perhaps we should have roving patrols of dieticians authorized to go into everyone's home to make sure that they're not eating potato chips or drinking soda pop (and forget that pesky little 4th amendment, the Bush administration has). I suggest sting operations, where we bust parents for buying twinkies from an undercover nutritionist, and mandatory drug testing in schools to check the Oreo levels in every student's urine - those who fail will have their parents arrested immediately. Such is the natural outcome of paternalistic reasoning.

Next he tries valiantly, but fails, to engage my argument about Washington's new law outlawing gambling on the internet. Take a look at this textbook example of a logical fallacy. In response to my statement that "adults have the right to gamble with their money if they see fit", he replies:

Of course, they don't have that right - indeed, every legal gaming establishment in every state is regulated by the local government. This is for a variety of reasons - to get a piece of the action, to ensure reasonable odds, and to keep criminal influence out. This is all aside from the problem of addiction (especially when gambling in private), which obviously has implications for society. Thus, the state has a vested interest in regulating gambling.

Notice the lack of clash with my argument. I'm arguing that individuals have the right to gamble, and he responds that governments have an interest in regulating casinos. That doesn't engage my position at all. I agree with him that the government has an interest in regulating casinos, but that does not, in any way, deny that adults have a right to gamble. Indeed, I would argue that it supports my position - the regulation of casinos to keep the game fair and clean is done precisely because the individual has a right to gamble in a fair game. To allow the casinos to run crooked games would be to allow fraud and theft, and the prevention of fraud and theft are clearly government responsibilities. Individuals have the right to do lots of things that are still regulated by the government - you have the right to get a driver's license if you pass the test, but the production of a car is still regulated.

I'm actually all for government regulation of online casinos whenever possible. One of the major problems we have, though, is that online gamling has a dubious legal status in the US and that is why virtually every gambling site on the internet is located in another country (Canada, Costa Rica and the Isle of Man in particular). But that puts them beyond the reach of government regulation. Indeed, most online casino operators would rather have their operations in the US with government regulation; it would protect their interests better and provide stronger assurance to potential customers that the game is fair and thus help them attract more players. What Washington is doing is not regulation, it's prohibition - and prohibition destroys and possibility of regulation.

He then goes on to make yet another idiotic comment, claiming to have discovered the real problem with my position:

Actually, this all explains a lot. It's not that Ed Brayton is against the government mandating that evolution be taught as a theory in local schools for scientific reasons - it's that Ed Brayton is against government mandates.

What a mishmash of nonsense. I'm not against the government mandating that evolution be taught as a theory in schools at all. In fact, I am a staunch supporter of requiring the teaching of evolution in schools (and Epperson v Arkansas ruled that it's unconstitutional to prohibit the teaching of evolution). Nor am I against government mandates, only against overreaching, liberty-destroying government mandates. I am all for government mandates that prevent murder, theft, rape, fraud, and so forth. I'm against government mandates that violate individual rights.

I'm sure there are many government mandates that dlamming would oppose - a law requiring that everyone abort every third pregnancy, for example (at least I hope he would oppose such a law) - but that doesn't mean that dlamming is "against government mandates", it means he's against government mandates that violate certain principles. And that is precisely what I oppose. To paint my views with so broad a brush is to engage in simple-minded ignorance. Then again, that seems to be dlamming's peculiar specialty.

There ya go, dlamming. Your hits for the day will now spike all the way up to 50 or more.

Update: Actually, here's the punchline to the whole thing: in his previous post, he apologizes to "all of you, my loyal readers" for being too busy to post. He might well have just said "both of you". As his sitemeter shows, he averages a whopping 13 hits a day, two of which are presumably he and his writing partner checking for comments. That's up from the 8 he got back in early March when he first made a fool of himself here. Today so far he's gotten 33, almost every one of them linking from here. His total hits since he started his blog are less than what this blog averages in half a day. Keep on chugging along, little engine that could. One day you'll say something intelligent and people might start paying attention. Or not.