Oh this is a good one. To that I'd had the idea of a hedonistic pursuit of pleasure is a goal in life. Pleasure is good but I do not think that life should be a pleasure crawl. Hedonism brings no more self-fulfillment than material goods.

I lived in Japan and this is largely correct from my impressions. A lot of Japanese simply don't seem to care about politics the same way that citizens in other countries do. Politics plays a very small part in everyday life and culture. How many Japanese television shows or movies dealt directly with the political process? Very few if any. In most other democracies, the political thriller or procedural is an estabished genre.

Caleb, I think that people are outraged at fraud involved in the scheme. Its not that people are pretending to be disabled but they are taking adventage of a program designed to help the disable and their families in order to make money. It hurts the policy because gaming the system like this tends to raise the cynicism level.

I just remember reading that Vonegurt (sp?) intended Harrison Bergeon to be a parody of how Ayn Rand views socialism. Considering his typical politics, this views seems more plausible than the idea that Harrison Bergeon is a straight satire of socialism.

I just remember reading that Vonegurt (sp?) intended Harrison Bergeon to be a parody of how Ayn Rand views socialism. Considering his typical politics, this views seems more plausible than the idea that Harrison Bergeon is a straight satire of socialism.

James, I thought that Harrison Bergeon was intended to be a satire on the conservative view of liberalism/socialism rather than an illustration of it.

I think its because many Republicans and libertarians have a relatively static, un-changing view of what government should or should not do and in case of conservatives what society should and should not look like. Libertarians have less static social views than conservatives. If your ideology requires a relatively unchanging version of government and society than you see consistency as a virture.

Liberals have a more loosely-goosey view of what government should and should not do and what society should look like. During the heyday of the Great Society, most liberals would have been revulted by open homosexuality and same-sex marriage. In fact, JFK's adminsitration actively persecuted homosexuals out of the federal government. Now equality for homosexuals and same-sex marriage is part of liberal orthodoxy and a self-evidently correct. This was a pretty fast and radical change over a period of forty or fifty years. It practically snow-balled after the end of the Clinton adminstration.

There are doctrinaire leftists like Orthoodox Marxists and Anarchists that do stick to consistency though and have the same problems as Conservatives and Libertarians. They play a very small part in American politics becasue they are much further to the left than any elected official and do not participate in the Democratic Party actively.

Or they could follow the Jewish solution and lawyer around their scriptures to get the result that they want. If the Torah is the constitution of the Jews than the Talmud is the living constiution interpretation of it.

Or they could follow the Jewish solution and lawyer around their scriptures to get the result that they want. If the Torah is the constitution of the Jews than the Talmud is the living constiution interpretation of it.

Or they could follow the Jewish solution and lawyer around their scriptures to get the result that they want. If the Torah is the constitution of the Jews than the Talmud is the living constiution interpretation of it.

Is this really the case though? I think a good argument can be made that we were just as ideologically divided in the past as we are now but that limited technology made us largely ignorant of the divisions. It could be more about willful blindness to ideology than anything else.

Speaking of cartoon libertarianism:

http://hurryupharry.org/2013/05/12/anarchodepravity/#more-81514

To the extent that they were protesting government intervention they think only helps the top strata of society and corporations, yes. However, a lot of the Occupy movement is not opposed to government intervention in the economy as a matter of principle. I think that most of them would support government intervention that would help the masses.

Do you need to have rentier income to be considered upper-class? Is there anytime a salaried or proprietary income is high enough to be considered upper-class? An A-list celebrity makes money through means you describe as middle-class but there income is in the millions and life-style that reflects this. A lot of people in finance also earn their income through non-rentier methods. I'd say that once income reaches in the high six-figure range, say above 500,000, than you are upper-class. If your income is between 100,000 and 500,000 than you are upper-middle class.

Its an interesting question. A lot of people on the Left have criticized Marxism as practiced but I can't recall anybody that argued that Marx's writings themselves are completely lacking in value. Even many people who are Liberal find at least something of value in Marx.

This makes a lot of sense. Modern liberalism and leftism isn't a coherent political ideology in the way that Libertarianism or Marxism or Amatchism. All three of the previous philosophies have a lot of variation but have a common foundation or end point be it the minimal state or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Modern liberalism has numerous foundations and no clear end point. To a certain extent it's a strength because it allows for flexibility. It's also a weakness for the reason you mentioned.

An example of a cartoon liberal/leftist would be like the people who see the United States as the source of all evil in the world and any American foreign policy as imperialist. Sometimes they extend this to an entire Western discourse. The liberals and leftists that keep talking about privilege also strike me as cartoonish.

I think thinks this sums up the division on the liberal/leftist side but it doesn't quite show what a cartoon liberal would be. To me a cartoon liberal or leftist like a cartoon libertarian or conservative has to be one that sees the liberal solution as so obviously correct that they can't understand why somebody would reach a different conclusion. These are the types that see libertarians and conservatives as strange creatures, not quite human, that can't be understood.

If I'm remembering correctly, I don't think this is right. One aspect of the Progressive Era was the High School movement, a push to have 14 to 18 year olds in school rather than going out to work. The High School movement was particularly big in the Mid-West and North East. I think that by the late 1910s or early 1920s, most Americans aged 14 to 18 were in school. At least in the more industrialized and urban parts of the country. In the South, you might be right.

When I went to watch the Hobbit, I had to deal with the constant narration from a group of teenagers.* Why can't people watch movies with no commentary while giving the appropriate audible reaction at the appropriate time?

*Although I understand that the idea that you should be silent during movies, plays, and musical performances is relatively recent.

No, it was accordance with Jewish law. Burial in this case means disposing of the body rather than letting it decompose in the open. However, you do not need to treat the body of the criminal with the same respect as the body of an ordinary person let alone a good person. By cremating and putting his ashes in the sea, the body was disposed of but not in a respectful way. This is perfectly fine.

No, it was accordance with Jewish law. Burial in this case means disposing of the body rather than letting it decompose in the open. However, you do not need to treat the body of the criminal with the same respect as the body of an ordinary person let alone a good person. By cremating and putting his ashes in the sea, the body was disposed of but not in a respectful way. This is perfectly fine.

In case your wondering, Jewish law requires that everybody be given a burial. No crime is considered so serious that it renders the perpetrator undeserving of a burial and requires their remains to rot forever. However, that doesn't mean that people deserve equal burials. You can treat the remains of criminal differently than those of a more ethical person.

Well, we know its not what others might do but what they will do. Spain has moer than a few people that revere Franco and Chile has its Pinochet fans. They treat the graves of their "heroes" as revered monuments.

I believe the French have a saying about the more things change, the more they stay the same. We might dress differently and our toys might be different but many of the dilemmas faced by us were faced by our ancestors in the distant past.

Personally, I don't see the benefit in denying Tamerlane Tsarnaev a burial somewhere. What he did was horrible but plenty of other people have done worse and received glorious funerals and burals because of the horrors that they inflicted on the world. Tamerlane Tsarnaev was a son, brother, husband, and father in addition to being a murderer. Not for his sake but for his families sake, he should be given a burial and his family should be allowed to mourn.