In 1993, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the forerunner to Fatah, signed on to the Declaration of Principles with Israel. The agreement, brokered by the United States, said the parties would engage only in bilateral negotiations to reach any agreement on the final status of a Palestinian state.
This week, in the august body where Zionism was once declared racism, where “human rights” councils are regularly led by the world’s most impressive Jew haters and votes condemning Israel are more common than any other, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian National Authority, will break this agreement, as he has so many others.
This week, I appeared on “Stossel” to debate the future of gay marriage with Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage.
In short, my position entails government abandoning the marriage business. This would permit individuals to enter into their own legal arrangements and accept — or not — any definition of marriage that suits their own moral or social outlook. It would remove the issue from courts and the vagaries of democracy. What other private relationship needs a useless stamp of approval from the state?
Needless to say, this position is probably deeply unpopular in the real world for two reasons. 1.) Social conservatives would see it as weakening of traditional marriage. 2.) It would not grant the legal, societal and state endorsement gay marriage advocates are seeking.
Judging from this appearance, though, hipster libertarians types are on board.
O Beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, has there even been another place on earth where so many people of wealthand power have paid for and put up with so much architecture they detested as within thy blessed borders?
I doubt it seriously. Every child goes to school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacement-parts wholesale distribution warehouse. Not even the school commissioners, who commissioned it and approved the plans, can figure out how it happened. The main thing is to try to avoid having to explain it to the parents.
For now, this is my lightly used personal blog. Elsewhere, I'm editor of Human Events and a nationally syndicated columnist (you can find most of my columns here and here and here -- and for years I wrote here). My bio is here. You can contact me at dharsanyi (at) gmail.com or follow me @davidharsanyi on Twitter.
