Here comes another major split between a responsible, productive demographic against an irresponsible collective seeking to distribute the impact of their own inconsideration and misfortunes. This is also another method of forcing equality by taking from the positives and redistributing to the negatives until the mutual dormancy of an orchestrated zero potential for everyone involved [...]
Posts Tagged ‘democracy’
Obama and the end of racial balance
Back in election 2008, many people voted for Barack Obama out of a simple desire to fix the racial inequities and conflict in the United States, a problem that has plagued us for centuries and peaks, periodically, in riots like Watts (1967) and L.A. (1992). The thinking was that if all people are finally made [...]
Freedom is collective slavery
Slavery takes many forms. An individual can be enslaved; a group can be enslaved, both physically and optionally, by ideas. Today, in celebration of Amerika.org’s history of telling the difficult and unpopular truth, we’re tackling “Freedom,” the holy grail of the modern West. It’s slavery. Not for the individual — no, you’re held to fewer [...]
Moral judgment blinds us
Among the many ways to look at the world, one of the most popular is moral judgment. Moral judgments are the shoulds, oughts and shouldn’t’ves of the world. When a situation happens, we decide according to some ideal what “should” have happened, and penalize people for what did. But that’s neurotic, since they did do [...]
Thresholds
Whenever the words “it’s the natural way” appear in debate or in print, I groan inwardly. They once seemed such an easy thing to say; granola, monogamous marriage, friendship and eating vegetables were “natural,” and soft drinks, aggressive selfishness, and living in tiny air-conditioned boxes were “un-natural.” But then someone pointed out the first paradox: [...]
Unskilled labor
Genghis Khan divides people. Many love him because he was tolerant of different faiths and believed in a classless society. Others point out rightfully that he destroyed more than he created, and all of the good things he did were a means to his own power. However, one thing that Genghis Khan was which we [...]
A battle of absolutes
So much of politics comes down to the choice of where you want to place your disadvantages. Either you put them at the top, and minimize them through what you hope is judicious use, or you distribute them throughout the system. Here’s today’s blast to this effect on Reason.com, where a raging debate on marijuana [...]
Relativism
So I was visiting an office the other day, and as often happens, I stumble on something in conversation that triggers a political response. The woman I was talking to reminds me of a smart version of everyperson: roughly conservative on fiscal issues, roughly liberal on social issues, but personally relatively conservative as a means [...]
Choice paralysis
Read this article and then think about the consequences for government and society: Researchers from several universities have determined that even though humans’ ability to weigh choices is remarkably advantageous, it can also come with some serious liabilities. People faced with numerous choices, whether good or bad, find it difficult to stay focused enough to [...]
The freedom-order cycle
Let me make a hypothesis here: if you want to be an ueber-tyrant, the best way is to get your citizens involved in some drama unrelated to the actual question of how you will rule the nation. For example, you can set up a government that makes rules, and then rule through media opinion; or [...]