inkbluesky

architectural reflections

Tattooed for a Day, Wild for a Night

“Temporary tattoos are back,” said Michael Benjamin, the president of Temptu, a New York supplier of mock tattoos and body paints. In more than a decade as Temptu’s chief executive, Mr. Benjamin has seen their status wax and wane. He said that in the last year or two, his business has doubled. And these days, he has an armful of competitors, companies like Funtoos, Tattoo Shock and Body Graphics.

The cost varies, from about $10 for a packet of do-it-yourself ink transfers, to several thousand dollars for a custom design applied by a pro.

Mock tattoos, like the authentic designs that inspire them, are fast becoming a pop culture staple, cropping up in films and on the playing field, in advertising campaigns and on the pages of fashion magazines.

Temporary tattoos do solve the oops shouldn’t have gotten that one problem. The other day a guest on Carson Daley was explaining and her tattoos and mentioned that the one of her ex’s name would have to be lasered off.

winter park

While I think they are seriously off course as far what constitutes a modern civilized society or even a functional one I would hate to see a libertarian’s head explode. So be warned that this essay has been suspected of causing such reactions. Ask a Libertarian, Part II: The Constitution as Libertarian Myth

To equate libertarianism with the classical liberalism that influenced our Founding Fathers is a philosophical error. While no doubt many classical liberals call themselves libertarians today, the modern movement has been heavily influenced by Austrian economics and Murray Rothard and takes a far more negative view of the state than the old men with wigs who wrote the Constitution. Even the minarchists (libertarians who believe that society needs a state, in contrast to anarchists who believe that society doesn’t need a state) who stop short of outright anarchism and the abolition of the state would have been seen as the most radical of radicals in the early Republic; they would have made the Locofocos look mainstream. John Locke, Adam Smith and the rest of the classical liberal gang did express a mistrust of state power and its granting of monopolistic privilege, but they also supported a state for the maintenance of law and order in the face of natural anarchy. A quick glance at the Constitution reveals that the Founding Fathers, far from consistently favoring a system that viewed the state as a necessary evil, saw a role for government to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

The minarchist may still argue that these broad general principles are fully compatible with a limited government favored by modern day libertarians. But the Constitution is also the source for Congress’s power to lay excises (the ancestor to our modern day sin taxes, which libertarians often criticize), to lay tariffs and regulate commerce (protectionism, a huge no-no to libertarianism), to borrow money and therefore establish a national debt (say goodbye to balanced budgets, another libertarian ideal), to establish post offices and post roads (see my previous complaints about this monopolistic agency), and to grant patents and copyrights (which is a contentious subject within libertarianism, some favoring it and some opposing it). Even a strict interpretation of the Constitution would grant the government powers that libertarians today complain about.

General welfare, that loosely defined term that continues to drive libertarians crazy in discussing constitutional interpretations, was a very real concept to these classical liberals.

Normally I try not to take such large snips from an essay, but this was posted about a year ago and since many Americans are still having the same argument, thought it deserved to be rediscovered. It is not wholly anti-libertarian. As much as I think libertarians such as Lew Rockwell are from another planet when it comes to economic and cultural issues the guy can make a hell of a good case when it comes to issues of privacy.