Category: Politics & Culture
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Politics, Cliff’s notes version
There is money and there is sex. All politics is a fight over these two gods. The purest form of the political Right: a few rules about sex, a few rules about money. The purest form of the political Left: many rules about sex, omnipresent rules about money.
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Two Parties Will Inevitably Refine Their Split
Assume you are a conservative political operative…it’s this simple: start at the extreme right wing (however you define it) and proceed leftward till you get to 50.00009% of the electorate. Stop. Go no further, because you will give up on your right flank what you gain on your left. Look back. The ground you…
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Some Other Thing With A Toe
We know we evolved the ability to run because, well, we can run. We have structures which allow us to run because we run. We know we de-evolved the tree-climbing structures because, well, we don’t have them. And other creatures have them. So it must be true that we used to have them, because other…
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Self As Cosmos
Since Freud, the psyche is complicated, both to oneself and to others. It may have been C.S. Lewis who observed that pre-modern man looked out upon a universe peopled with powers and personalities and mysteries, and modernity supposedly erased these forces, only to have them descend into the soul. The world is disenchanted and stripped…
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Why science in the West?
Science is Aristotle. The unique contribution of the Christian church is that the church was open enough to thought and debate to produce thinkers who liked Aristotle, assimilated him, and went on. This says more about the CONFIDENCE LEVEL of the church than anything else, as opposed to, say, Islam. And this confidence level rises…
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American Supreme Court And Global Law
Steven Breyer once said (I’m paraphrasing of course) that in South Africa there is a wall that used to be a wall to a prison and is now a wall to the court house. This is a symbol of a larger truth: that their society has evolved wonderfully, has now a written constitution,…
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Conspiracy Theory
There is an unmistakable flaw in the logic of all conspiracy theories. The sane and normal pattern in evaluating evidence is to speculate one level, but then test that first speculation for veracity before building a second-order speculation on top of it. The conspiracy thinker is simply someone who can’t think clearly enough to distinguish…
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Unnecessary arguments
I believe in miracles, but if I were a scientist I would have to assume no miracles, then proceed. It is the sensible working principle. Of course, as a person (which is a bigger category than the category “scientist”), the assumption no miracles is a philosophical position, not just a working principle. The first…
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Regulation as Paternalism
Regulation for the purpose of limiting risk is paternalism. It is easy for statists to point to bad results as a result of de-regulation, because there will always be some bad results when risk is real. It is hard to point to foregone good results as a result of regulation, because, well, they are…
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Politics Is Inevitably Slander
Thesis 1: Jesus is the end of ethics. I mean, the summit of ethical deliberation is in the New Testament principle “All the law is in this one saying: love your neighbor as yourself.” The purpose of God’s love in Jesus is to restore the human soul for an ethical end — to love.…