Standards, Cultural Relativism, and Broken Windows
This blog builds on the prior blogs Virtue: religion and philosophy, what does the founders’ vision embrace? and Virtue and Pandora’s Box: Effective Policy. Pandora’s Box discussed the damage some Victorian virtue policies wrought, but said the social justice movement’s…
Communism’s Dirty Secret (and Capitalism’s and Democracy’s as Well)
Communism is a utopian philosophy, summed up by the quote from Karl Marx in the figure above. Communism’s secret is that it requires virtue to implement. Its dirty secret is that communism does not teach, induce, or want virtue.…
Politics, Politicians, and Demonic Possession
“One of the artifices of Satan is, to induce men to believe that he does not exist: another, perhaps equally fatal, is to make them fancy that he is obliged to stand quietly by, and not to meddle with…
Ethics, Morality, and Virtue: Relative vs. Absolute Meaning
Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” Genesis…
Virtue: Religion and Philosophy, What does the Founders’ Vision Embrace?
Common wisdom among the right is that we are in trouble as a society because we have chased God from our institutions and are no longer religious. Their solution is to bring religion back into our institutions to re-institute…
Operant Conditioning, Path Dependency and Societal Revolution, Part 1
First a disclaimer. I dislike the practice of operant conditioning. It robs a person of their free will and inherently erodes virtue. Now there are some people in the neuroscience community that say freewill does not exist. While I cannot…
Power Shift, Part 8: Concluding Thoughts
“If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you” Friedrich Nietzsche I rather suspect many people that wield federal power or shape those who do have stared very long into the abyss. Some genuinely want to…
Power Shift, Part 7: The Great Society
“The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning. The Great Society is a…
Power Shift, Part 6: World War II
A command economy is a key aspect of a political system in which a central governmental authority dictates the levels of production that are permissible and the prices that may be charged for goods and services. Most industries are…
Power Shift, Part 5: The New Deal
“We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security…
