“Such cases show what happens when our heightened eagerness to take offense meets institutions’ innate desire to avoid trouble. If hearing a contrary opinion feels like a personal assault, then any potentially controversial statement is equivalent to shouting fire in a crowded theater. It’s much easier for a business or a school to avoid trouble, and potential liability, by shutting down discussion altogether.”
Read More“By pragmatism’s own metaphors, their philosophy is like an acid that dissolves dogmas. The problem with acid is that it never knows when to stop burning. That’s why liberals are constantly discovering new crises that require more government solutions. Suggesting to activist liberals that maybe some day they could just go home and get a real job elicits nothing but bewilderment or rage when you bring it up.”
Read MoreThe American founders used reason to unleash freedom. The Europeans used reason to crush it. Reason without freedom constructs a reality rather than recognizing it as it is and adapting to it. Constructing a reality is a despotic enterprise.
Read More“If anything has been demonstrated by modern experience in these matters, it is that, once wide coercive powers are given to governmental agencies for particular purposes, such powers cannot be effectively controlled by democratic assemblies. If the latter do not themselves determine the means to be employed, the decisions of their agents will be more or less arbitrary.”
Read MoreThey likely do not recognize the legitimacy of individual ideas as property. For them it is not theft, it is a stark difference in political culture. Trump may think he is seeking simple economic fairness, but he is really asking for China to change its civic culture. This is a challenging reconciliation.
Read MoreAt 66 I am more inclined to accepts my flaws than work hard to correct them. Again, tipping to Churchill I would hope to limit my annoying virtues and be less ashamed of my admirable vices.
Read More“I am wholeheartedly in favor of women students or employees knowing their rights and speaking up to defend them. However, the #MeToo movement has gone seriously off track in encouraging uncorroborated accusations dating from ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. No democracy can survive in such a paranoid climate of ambush and summary execution. This is Stalinism, a nadir of politics.”
Read MoreDonald Trump is the devil, removing any need for rationality, morality or honesty from the resistance movement. The evil of Donald Trump is required to justify the batshit behavior we have witnessed at the Kavanaugh hearing.
Read MoreThe left has exhibited far more hostility to free speech than Trump has ever remotely considered.
Read MoreBy acknowledging human flaws and addressing them, conservatives permit human potential to flourish. By seeking a non existent perfection socialists require central control and power that frustrates human potential and growth.
Read MoreAs we have seen with the elimination of the filibuster by Harry Reid, sacrificing the means to the end is a short sighted strategy and creates tools that will be used against you. No matter how noble the ends the means still matter.
Read MoreSocialism and its cousin, Progressivism, are not the forward-thinking ideologies they pretend, but regressions to the natural tendencies of man.
Read MoreReform is seductive. The faults of the status quo and our current institutions are vivid, magnified in an academic media complex that considers ‘viral’ an achievement. Reform is inchoate and illusive with faults yet to be recognized, presently clear only in the minds of critics and reactionaries. In the future these faults are the subject of history.
Read MoreMadison was correct that a dispersal of special interests over a large land mass could protect a republic from tyranny, but he failed to foresee that special interests are no longer restrained by mere distance and geography. They now exist in the cloud.
Read More“As Adams explained it, the French philosophes had invented the word, which became a central part of their utopian style of thinking and a major tenet in their “school of folly.” It referred to a set of ideals and hopes, like human perfection or social equality, that philosophers mistakenly believed could be implemented in the world because it existed in their heads. Jefferson himself thought in this French fashion, Adams claimed, confusing the seductive prospects envisioned in his imagination with the more limited possibilities history permitted. “
Read More“There’s nothing wrong with partisanship per se, but it’s a problem when the parties view each other as enemies and existential threats. Centrism may seem an obvious solution, but too little ideology can be as dangerous as too much.”
Read MoreAt some point ideology does matter. sound ideology must yield results but also requires commitment and patience. This requires the clarity of leadership that can balance ideology and pragmatism. Pragmatism without ideology is a an unmoored ship that will eventually crash on the rocks. Having a sound ideology, while acknowledging its imperfections, is a map that assures that detours do not become destinations.
Read Moreby Henry Oliner One of a few themes that I return to in this blog is the fascination with poor decisions from very intelligent people. It has led me from reading history to reading about the way we think and…
Read MoreFrom Glenn Harlan Reynolds in The USA Today, Social media threat: People learned to survive disease, we can handle Twitter: Likewise, in recent years we’ve gone from an era when ideas spread comparatively slowly, to one in which social media in…
Read Moreby Henry Oliner The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli (highly recommended) is a compilation of biases and psychological barriers to clear and rational thinking. Dobelli warns of “trend gurus who see trends in everything”. He contends this is…
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