A Solutions-based Approach to Social Justice
The glowing horseshoe in the figure above is at the optimal point Matt Haig discusses in How to Stop Time. This optimal point exists in many things. Not enough of the independent variable and the dependent variable is not maximized.…
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…
Virtue and Pandora’s Box: Effective Policy
I’ve been contemplating virtue quite a bit lately and a comment about the origins of Steampunk. I started reading steampunk well before it was a popular meme. I recall an essay I read on the origins of steampunk and…
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.…
Part 4: Policy Development
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,…
Educating Sheep Versus Citizens: Part 1
This blog series will develop a conceptual framework to assess how effectively schools prepare graduates for their responsibilities as citizens in a free republic. This first part will look at an overall framework that compares educating sheep versus educating…
Responsibility and Accountability Part 4: The Judiciary and Accountability
This is Part 4 of a series on accountability and responsibility. As the graphic shows, the two should work together, but can but can get jammed. But often the two are divorced, or at least separated, in this case, by…
Truth is the First Casualty of…Unchecked Power
Three years after the US’s catastrophic run from Afghanistan, most Americans have no clue what happened. No one has stood up and taken responsibility. Five years after the killings that triggered Black Lives Matter (BLM) most Americans do not really…
The Tragedy of the Commons: The Political Commons
I first came across the problem (tragedy) of the commons in a political science course in grad school. We read a remarkable work by Elinor Ostrom about the problem. Her work both resonated with me and left me looking for…
Can a Free Republic be a Superpower: Part 4 Toxic Debt
Toxic Debt threatens not only the ability to be a superpower, but our entire way of life. When I was in Bosnia right after the 911 attacks, many of our soldiers said this could never happen in the US. I…
