Part 5—Cutting the Puppet Masters’ Strings
Abstract: Critical thinking and mindfulness are the two-fold path to citizen resiliency and independence from media induced memes. “A lie doesn’t become truth, wrong doesn’t become right and evil doesn’t become good just because it’s accepted by a majority.” —…
Part 1: Political Movements—Maskirovka and Words Hide Meanings
Abstract: Do words and terms matter? Can political groups hide their agendas in nice sound bites in a game of maskirovka? Maskirovka 2.0 is a continuation of the old military approach, to which we must add new whole of-government tools,…
Operant Conditioning, Path Dependency and Societal Revolution, Part 2
As in Part 1 of this series, first a disclaimer. I am of the philosophical line in the discussion below. I think we should teach and be models of virtue because it is right and good and not because…
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…
