 Understanding Is and Ought - A Personal View
by Michael Stuart Kelly
Shorthand "mental tags" are extremely useful for moral principles. But the danger in their constant use is that they make the mind turn off on a cognitive level. They provide an immediate emotional reaction—usually moral denunciation, but sometimes, moral praise. The "What is it?" has become so integrated into the "What should I do?" that it is no longer asked or even thought about. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - The Futility of Nonstop Relief
by Tibor R. Machan
No one can accept the idea of trying to fill a bottomless hole—that people in the poorer parts of the world will forever need to be taken care of, that they simply will never cope on their own. And this is quite rational—if someone requires emergency support, to be helped back on his or her feet, after which a productive life will be resumed, helping makes sense. But if help simply goes to be consumed, after which more help is required, on and on and on, this is intolerable. (Read more...)
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Was Ayn Rand a Conservative?
by Neil Parille
Ayn Rand, as we know, did not consider herself a conservative. She called herself a “radical for capitalism.” In addition, many of her views were contrary to those of mainstream conservatism. She was an atheist and a fierce critic of religion. At the same time, the occasional references to Rand as a conservative call for explanation. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 2, 2005 |
Robert Nozick's Libertarian Framework for Utopia
by Edward W. Younkins
Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia made libertarianism’s views on the nature and legitimacy of the minimal state respectable in academic circles. Nozick revived the classical liberal tradition with his abstract, clever, and often obscure explanation of how a minimal state might arise legitimately in the form of an all-inclusive, rights-respecting protection agency. He was instrumental in creating the intellectual and philosophical foundation that has allowed the creation and flourishing of today’s numerous libertarian organizations. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 2, 2005 |
Machan's Musings - Empty Environmentalism?
by Tibor R. Machan
In the community where I live, environmentalists are hard at work to put a stop to all developments, meaning, all efforts to increase the available housing and other human amenities for people wanting to live there. Orange County, CA, is a highly prized area, so it’s no wonder people want to live there, and those with land find a demand to fill for homes and other amenities—developments, as they have been dubbed, probably because the designation tends to remove from it the human element and suggests raw greed. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Welcome Trouble in Washington
by Tibor R. Machan
With things falling apart in and near the White House, I am hard put to be upset. Indeed, I find it a relief. After all, it confirms my long held view that making politics such a vital part of our lives is a very big mistake. (Read more...)
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Anarcho Capitalism as an Inevitable Consequence of Minarchist Libertarianism - A Personal View
by Duncan Bayne
I see the division between anarcho-capitalism and minarchist-libertarianism as false and unnecessary, because there is a natural and inevitable progression from a genuinely non-coercive minarchist-libertarian government to anarcho-capitalism. One is simply a subset of the other: minarchist-libertarianism is simply anarcho-capitalism with one provider holding a (most likely very short-lived) monopoly. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Never Mind How Much Worse Things Could Get
by Tibor R. Machan
Sure, a problem with the less Draconian evils of the welfare state is partly that they could habituate people to accept coercion from governments, making the march toward a dictatorship more probable. However, that’s not the biggest problem. It is far more serious that the welfare state is a lingering political, moral, and economic malady already—it constantly violates individual rights, and people suffer from that plenty. Never mind how much worse it all could get. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Pitfalls of Predictions
by Tibor R. Machan
I think it makes sense not to be too trusting of the social scientists' way of thinking about people, as if we were simply more complicated versions of some classical physical system whose outcomes can be predicted if the parameters are known well enough. People will probably keep surprising us, for better and for worse—that, in fact, is one way they are different from the rest of the matter in the world. (Read more...)
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Daily Linz 17 - Friday Miscellany
by Lindsay Perigo
PC; Diana; MSK.
Political Correctness-loathers everywhere may be interested to learn that New Zealand’s National Party, which came within a whisker of winning power in the recent general election, has appointed the world’s first Political Correctness Eradicator. (Read more...)
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Daily Linz 16 - Fundamental Stuff 4
by Lindsay Perigo
As Objectivists, we should hold the thought that Pythagoras’ doctrines were to resurface in Plato—to devastating effect. While there is no denying his groundbreaking, fruitful brilliance, the fact that his discoveries were steeped in mysticism set the scene for Plato’s full-on rationalism and intrinsicism, with everything that implied for the future of Western thought and civilisation. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - The U.S.S.R. Didn’t Fail Because of The U.S.
by Tibor R. Machan
If anything, because the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were allies against Nazi Germany for the latter part of the Second World War, the U.S.S.R. had U.S. economic support back then. That support continued for many years thereafter. In the ensuing time, until its collapse, the Soviet Union was not impeded economically by the U.S., but mostly left to its own resources. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 26, 2005 |
A Review of Virginia Postrel's "The Future and Its Enemies"
by Edward W. Younkins
This well-written, readable, and insightful work defies conventional political boundaries by arguing that a more politically relevant categorization is achieved by defining the ways individuals and groups view the future. Ms. Postrel's book is a must-read for anyone interested in commerce, technology, public policy, and the search for truth in a dynamic world. (Read more...)
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Russia: Hail the Good Revolution
by Peter Cresswell
The October Revolution of 1917, commemorated today, leaves nothing to celebrate. But the October Revolution wasn't the only Russian Revolution that year, and it wasn't even a real revolution .... (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Entitlements Versus Rights
by Tibor R. Machan
A great many entitlements people now have by law can be seen to be wrong whenever they involve the violation of our basic rights. In time, however, it will become evident that this is a very bad development—for example, by the emergence of enormous deficits and police actions against innocent people who simply wish to hold on to what is theirs or do what they freely choose to do. And we are beginning to witness such developments around the country and the world. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - A Backlash Against Pets?
by Tibor R. Machan
In order to reduce the likelihood they will come to my home to flex their muscles, I will try not to get a pet. More likely, I will break down because I’d like to have one. But I do not want some eager-beaver officer, installed by the likes of PETA to "protect" pets, to come and lord it over me and my home. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Commercial Free, Babble Full
by Tibor R. Machan
Non-commercial radio and TV broadcasters run fundraising promotional sessions two or three times a year, all of which seek money while denouncing money-seeking via commerce, where both sides get what they want and no charity is involved. Too bad. Because how on earth do all those listeners get the funds they will send to these non-commercial stations unless they themselves carry out some successful commercial undertakings? As Rand used to say, "Blank out!" (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Paternalism at Yale and The Times
by Tibor R. Machan
This, folks, really takes the cake for me: David F. Swensen, chief investment officer at Yale University, has penned an op-ed for The New York Times, in defense of rank financial paternalism. It doesn’t surprise me a bit that this op-ed appeared in the Times, that venerable member of the fourth estate, which has become an unrestrained cheerleader for paternalism on nearly every front of human social life. (Read more...)
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Daily Linz 14 - Friday Miscellany
by Lindsay Perigo
Linz, Bidinotto and Shiraz! (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 19, 2005 |
Daily Linz 12 - Fundamental Stuff 3
by Lindsay Perigo
Parmenides figured Heraclitus and the Milesians had got it right about there being a “fundamental stuff,” but they were wrong about what it was. It was one thing, but it was everything. As the Musketeers might have put it, all was one and one was all. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 19, 2005 |
Machan's Musings - Will the Market Do It?
by Tibor R. Machan
In short, the market is very likely, indeed, to do it, and all the complaints that we need the government to get things done tend to stem from a bad—i.e., the governmental—habit, and not from serious reflection and historical evidence. (Read more...)
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Daily Linz 11 - Phor the Record
by Lindsay Perigo
I normally enjoy writing my Daily Linzes. I have not enjoyed writing this one. Normally anything I say about the pholk on Regi’s site is a piss-take, to which they seem incapable of reacting humorously. But certain seriously misleading things are being repeated and repeated there that bear serious rebuttal—which I have now, reluctantly, furnished. For the record. (Read more...)
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Machan's Musings - Why Do They Keep Doing It?
by Tibor R. Machan
Criminal public policies are just that: criminal. The government deeds amounting to such crimes are every bit as objectionable as those of individuals. This isn’t an easy fact to sell, especially when so many hold out hope that they, too, will sometimes benefit from these crimes. (Read more...)
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Daily Linz 10 - Idol Musings
by Lindsay Perigo
Last night I watched New Zealand Idol for the first time. It was the penultimate programme in this, the second series. Nick probably has the thing sewn up, so to speak, if only on the grounds of sex appeal. Rosita has the superior instrument in the voice department, but gyrating whale is just not a good look. The loser in all of this is music. (Read more...)
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Toward the Unity and Integration of Knowledge: The Study of Political and Economic Philosophy
by Edward W. Younkins
Because no field is totally independent of any other field, there are really no discrete branches of knowledge. There is only cognition in which subjects are separated out for purposes of study. That is fine for purposes of specialization, but in the end, we need to reintegrate by connecting one’s specialized knowledge back into the total knowledge of reality. (Read more...)
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