Hiatus is self-explanatory. I’ve taken a break from my political blogging activities of indefinite length but don’t necessarily want to get rid of the blog as I may want to return to it. What isn’t self-explanatory is why and for the few of you who keep track of what I have to say, I think [...]
I haven’t had a drink in 16 yrs, but I’m very tempted to buy a bottle of scotch tonight, drink it and talk philosophy, politics and morality all night, in honor of Hitch.
A fundamental aspect of being American is freedom of conscience. This idea is the bedrock of classical liberalism and of individual sovereignty. We respect the individual’s right to make up his/her own mind about one’s relationship with God, and other important moral decisions. Some traditions have emerged over time in the U.S. with regards to how religious life and secular life intermingle. It seems to me that we’ve tacitly agreed that certain spaces are ‘cosmopolitan’, i.e.; we recognize that people of conflicting beliefs will all want to participate in such areas of civic life and accordingly, as a matter of politeness, we keep our religion to ourselves in the. Most of us know what these places are. For example, in a diner, you don’t stand up and ask everyone to say grace. You don’t preach at a dinner party of many strangers, realizing that there may be people of many faiths present who don’t want to be subjected to religious hectoring. Conversely, at gatherings in which most people are known to share the same faith, it’s quite appropriate to engage in overt displays of religious expression. I won’t drag this out – hopefully you readily recognize that this is traditional in the U.S.
Sigh, listening to the likes of Peter Schwiezer and the right wing echo chamber discuss ‘crony capitalism’, one would think that this kind of thing never happened in government before, or that other’s haven’t been complaining about it for years. I say welcome to the party, but you should realize most on the right are [...]
Next time you hear Tom Friedman or some other supposed ‘sophisticate’ praising China’s enlightened, technocratic government or it’s vaunted economic wisdom, remind them of these prisons and prisoners. This is an ongoing human rights violation and a crime against humanity. Friedman once longed for the U.S. to be “China for a day” so the U.S. [...]
First things first – you don’t possess special knowledge of political philosophy, economics or sociology that makes you smarter than the rest of us. I know who the core of Occupy blah blah is – Ad Busters, an anarcho-communist activist group, so don’t bother taking the pose that I’m ignorant of your philosophy. I know, you worship Kropotkin and Proudhon, and believe they saw through this corrupt system of control we idiots call freedom and capitalism. But you see, just as all other communist/collectivist ideologies, all it’s really good for is criticism. It doesn’t possess a stitch of real world applicability.
The spectacle happening on Wall Street and in other cities across the U.S. is no mystery. We turned government into a teat for special interests to suckle from a long time ago. It’s inevitable that some people will get angry and believe that they should get a chance to live off the rest of us [...]
Watch this video. Jon Stewart skewers Fox and CNN for their willful exclusion of Ron Paul from their coverage. It’s too good to not pass on! The Daily Show Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook
To hear the comments of the pundits and politicians over the past couple of days, one would think that the Tea Party and other’s who support fiscal responsibility are some kind of lunatics. Whether it’s New York Times columnists calling them Jihadists or congressmen calling them [...]
A friend of mine recently asked me to comment on some investment advice from Robert Anorth, commented on by Jonathan Burton, at Marketwatch (here)in a recent article. I think he’s spot on in many respects, but I also took the opportunity to write down how I see our current problems and my assessment was indeed [...]
