Not one to accept the mishmash of ideas which is the modern worldview, Professor Minogue reminds us: A free State is one in which there is a strong resistance to professionalization; it is marked by that “versatility” which Pericles claimed for Athens. [page 150] This is not to argue that professionalization is bad. Minogue was … [Read more…]
I’m still dealing with the intellectual aftermath of Kenneth Minogue’s The Liberal Mind. In that book, he tells us: War is habit-forming, and peace is confusing to many people who cannot deal with conflicting standards and feelings of guilt. [page 111] I’m aware of others who made comments about the eerie and morally disedifying attractiveness … [Read more…]
Here’s a good and short article by a clearheaded thinker, Ivan Eland: Pro-Business vs. Pro-Market: What’s the Difference?. I think a similar point can be made about the political marketplaces. This is to say that there are those politicians who would govern, that is organize certain types of human activities conducive to a fuller human … [Read more…]
Preface This entry is the core of a larger work. It’s sketchy and incomplete but possibly worth the read. Introduction In the Gospel of St. John, we read: As [Jesus] passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he … [Read more…]
I’ve started reading some of the works of John Dahlberg, Lord Acton, sometimes given honorary titles such as “the historian of liberty.” Being largely cash-free, I downloaded pdf files of some of his works from Liberty Fund which has made available for free a good number of classic books on history, political theory, philosophy, science, … [Read more…]
There is an important point raised by the research discussed in this article, We Are What We Experience. I’ll quote a good part of this short article because of its importance, regardless of how well or poorly this particular study stands up to efforts to verify or explicate its results: Our life experiences — the … [Read more…]
In an earlier posting, The Liberal Mind: What is politics?, I addressed the obvious question, “What is Politics?”. I covered a lot of ground to start off a line of reasoning tightly tied to my current goal of enriching our store of words and concepts for discussing our moral and social lives. While it’s true … [Read more…]
I’m speaking of rational ‘conspiracy theorists’ which means those who claim, rightly, that power-elites develop and are quite capable of engaging ruthlessly in focused criminal conspiracies when their interests are threatened. I don’t even know how to make a pitch to those who think there is a tight-knit conspiracy run by Satan or Jesuits or … [Read more…]
In a prior weblog posting, Intentionality as the Guide to Philosophical Thinking, I discussed this quote: I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first dawning opens gradually, by little and little, into a full and clear light. [Sir Isaac Newton] I write often about my efforts to find … [Read more…]
This article, Hunting for a Mass Killer in Medieval Graveyards , informs us that: Modern [bubonic] plague is carried by fleas and spreads no faster than the rats that carry them can travel. [And this modern plague can be defeated by eliminating fleas and/or rats.] The Black Death seems to have spread directly from one … [Read more…]