Politics

Today's Best Example That Libertarians Do Not Edit Newspapers…

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…comes from this L.A. Times article about government-less Belgium, which starts like this:

If a government falls and practically nobody hears it, does it make a sound?

Unable — or unwilling — to work together, bickering politicians have left unassuming Belgium without a fully functioning government for eight months, the longest for any nation in Europe since World War II.

Through most of that time, few Belgians, let alone the outside world, even seemed to notice. Trains continue to run, waffles are still being grilled on street corners, and people window-shop along centuries-old arcades. Tourists still sample mussels, go for overpriced canal rides in Bruges and snap up Tintin souvenirs, blissfully unaware of a political crisis.

The European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, both headquartered here in Brussels, barely muster a shrug at the vagaries of Belgian domestic politics.

Wow! Sounds like an interesting meditation on the surprising unnecessariness of a sitting legislature! Perhaps an examination of how voluntarism fills the (presumed) gaps when government recedes…. Yeah, no:

Still, the political paralysis is becoming unseemly.

I guess so!