How to govern well
What do Singapore, the United States, Canada, Denmark, and England all have in common? At first glance, not much. One is an oligarchic city state, two are parliamentary democracies, another is a Scandinavian social...
Category: Philosophy
Nietzsche, brought to you by Heineken.
Is Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals too long for you? Good news! Now you can just watch this Heineken commercial:
Capra-corn and the life of our time
There’s a quote about Carl Jung that I’ve come across a couple of times and shamelessly stolen every chance I’ve had: “We live a double life whether we know it or not. We live...
One last salvo on immigration
Mark’s points about the relationship between American dynamism and immigration are well-taken. Again, I’d like to stress that I’m endorsing an exceedingly mild form restrictionism – perhaps a system that expands immigration quotas for...
Breaking news about 2.5K-year-old-texts.
Given all the time we spend talking about Platonism around here, I thought it would be a good idea to link to this Guardian article about a new analysis of Plato’s texts. Through an...
Folk wisdom and the tyranny of the experts
[updated below] I’ve been thinking about birth a great deal lately. This is likely because birth in my family is just around the corner. Our second is due in July. In any case, all...
A brief defense of the Pope
[updated] “I read the coverage of the Pope every day in the newspapers and listen to the BBC news and as a Catholic and a journalist I feel like crying out pathetically: “This is...
Non-foundationalism for the layman.
I’m reading Thomas Kuhn’s controversial classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which Kuhn put forward, among other things, the suggestion that there not be any sense in which we can say that modern...
Community, technology, & work
I think this Amanda Marcotte piece is pretty interesting. She touches on the idea of work and community and how the modern workplace has, until very recently, served to cut us off entirely from...
On noble savages and the humanity of the ‘other’
Sullivan nods approvingly at this passage from Conor on Avatar’s Na’vi: The problem with the noble savage cliche is that it is demonstrably untrue. The people who inhabited North America before the arrival of...
culture is everything (well, mostly everything)
“In short, liberals and conservatives refuse to see the areas in which they have common ground because far too often they simply cannot get past the cultural markers that prevent them from even listening...
From the Department of Missing the Point
Despite my recent disagreements with Conor, one area where he is indubitably correct is in criticizing conservatism’s inability to engage the culture in which it must exist. This, to me, is not a political...
do the evolution
Continuing the discussion Chris began earlier, Scott asks: Erik, in Chris’ opening salvo, he mentions his general disdain for the current political parties and the role they play in US politics as one driving...
“Well, what are you doing creeping around a cow shed at two o’clock in the morning? That doesn’t sound very wise to me.”
In the comments to Scott’s post last week, greginak (who was one of the few to hone in on Scott’s central point) asked for the “posters to offer criticisms of their own theories.” This seemed...
Kulturkampf
Victor Davis Hanson is visiting Europe. More precisely, Italy and Greece. Several profound insights into the nature of continental society follow: After concluding another 16 days in Europe. I am again reminded how different...
John Derbyshire and the Wise Latina
“Judge Sotomayor was raised in public housing? So was I. Her mother was a nurse working late shifts? So was mine. When did white working poor people disappear off the face of the earth?...
On Having the Truth
by kyle cupp I picked a fight with a book the other day. It was a work on ethics. I’ve occasionally taken it off the shelf and scanned a little here and there, but...
going to war with the army you have
“Rather than deep moral and spiritual renewal leading to civic health, what if it’s our national solipsism and susceptibility to suggestion that pull us together, and pull us through? What if, rather than being...
From Intolerance to Tolerance to Acceptance
Freddie has made a strong argument against viewing autism as a positive thing to be celebrated. In so doing – and keeping in mind that he is our resident liberal – Freddie argues that...
