Sex

Some hot water this week for Rep. Matt Gaetz. The Sunshine State Republican and adroit controversialist stands accused of everything from having sex with a 17-year-old girl to throwing orgies with underage prostitutes to showing his fellow lawmakers pictures of nude women on the House floor. He has yet to be caught chucking an alligator into a drive-thru window or attacking a Disney princess with a flamethrower, but even by Florida Man standards these are serious charges. The Justice Department has opened an investigation, while Gaetz himself has denied everything, claiming he’s being extorted. And certainly he deserves due process and the benefit of the doubt. Yet the allegations against him raise a thorny question: where do Republicans draw the line on sexual misconduct?

What sex are you? It's a simple question and one that most of those filling out this year's census will answer quickly before moving on. But for others, the decision to ask this – rather than allow people to state what gender they think they are – is one laced with controversy. This shouldn't be the case. After all, we have known that there are two sexes since the dawn of time, and we are quite capable of distinguishing them. These two sexes have different needs; and men and women also face different risks.  Only one will need cervical cancer screening, for instance.

SeattleI have seen the future, and it looks much like Washington State.But let’s get there by steps. The Pacific Northwest, for much of its history dominated by the logging and fishing industries, has an aggressive blue-collar tradition. Radical groups like the Industrial Workers of the World — or so-called Wobblies — used to congregate there. Sometimes on a Saturday night in downtown Seattle old anarchists can still be found singing their ballads of longshoremen’s revolts. The place has been called 'the hideout capital of the USA’, a far-flung outpost where generations of the nation’s failed, fed-up, and felonious have gone to disappear.

Any attempt to expound post-liberalism must begin by taking a view of what liberalism is. And liberalism can be viewed as a philosophy that enshrines freedom as its foundational principle. Freedom from what, though? That is a moving target. The pioneers of liberalism, whether they be John Locke or the Founding Fathers, wanted to be free from the tyranny of the minority, that is, from power exercised arbitrarily by a political sovereign. Two hundred years later, following J.S. Mill’s disdain for the craven conformism of late-Victorian social mores, liberals realized they wanted to be free from an empowered majority. That is, even if a majority want democratically to decide gambling should be made illegal, for liberals the practice should remain legal as long as one gambler remains.