Category: Social and Political Philosophy
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Garry Kasparov on Socialism
The following has 'gone viral' as they say: I'm enjoying the irony of American Sanders supporters lecturing me, a former Soviet citizen, on the glories of Socialism and what it really means! Socialism sounds great in speech soundbites and on Facebook, but please keep it there. In practice, it corrodes not only the economy but…
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Still More on the Trump Phenomenon
A reader opines and I respond: As far as I can tell, our thoughts on Trump’s unfitness are pretty close, and the way you’ve laid out the matter in your most recent post (Trumpian Propositions) also mirrors my thinking. This extends to the following sentence, which I’ve uttered almost verbatim to friends and family: “we…
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Is Sanders a Socialist?
Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist and I have loosely referred to him in the same way, violating my own strictures against loose talk. Mea culpa. But of course Sanders is not a socialist in any reasonably strict sense of the term. Not only does he misuse the term, but he also does so quite…
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William Ellery Channing on the Rude Machinery of Government
An important message for lefties and RINOs alike: Another important step is a better comprehension by communities that government is at best a rude machinery, which can accomplish but very limited good, and which, when strained to accomplish what individuals should do for themselves, is sure to be perverted by selfishness to narrow purposes, or to defeat…
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Oakeshott on the Conservative Temperament
Before one is a conservative or a liberal ideologically, one is a conservative or a liberal temperamentally, or by disposition. Or at least this is a thesis with which I am seriously toying, to put it oxymoronically. The idea is that temperament is a major if not the main determinant of political commitments. First comes…
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Taxation: A Liberty Issue
Despite their name, liberals seem uninterested or insufficiently interested in the 'real' liberties, those pertaining to property, money, and guns, as opposed to the 'ideal' liberties, those pertaining to freedom of expression. A liberal will go to any extreme when it comes to defending the right to express his precious self no matter how inane…
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Of Cats and Mice, Laws and Criminals
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, tr. R. J. Hollingdale, New York Review Books, 1990, p. 101: Certain rash people have asserted that, just as there are no mice where there are no cats, so no one is possessed where there are no exorcists. That puts me in mind of anarchists who say that where…
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Andrew Jackson, Revenant
An excellent article by Walter Russell Meade. Study it, muchachos. Yes, this will be on the final. A revenant is one who has returned from the dead or from a long absence. Has Old Hickory come back as Donald Trump? Though I despise contemporary liberalism and leftism (any difference?), that doesn't quite put me on…
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Central Planning
You say you're for it? Would you still be for it if I could show you that it is virtually certain that you will end up among the centrally planned and not among the central planners?
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“No Religious Test”
In Article VI of the U. S. Constitution we read: . . . no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. Does it follow that the U. S. Constitution allows a Muslim citizen who supports sharia (Islamic law) to run for public office?…
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Time for a Moratorium on Immigration from Muslim Lands?
And now San Bernardino. It is surely 'interesting' that in supposedly conservative media venues such as Fox News there has been no discussion, in the wake of this latest instance of Islamic terrorism, of the obvious question whether immigration from Muslim lands should be put on hold. Instead, time is wasted refuting silly liberal calls…
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Machiavelli, Arendt, and Virtues Public and Private
Current events warrant this re-post from two years ago. Christian precepts such as "Turn the other cheek" and "Welcome the stranger" make sense and are salutary only within communities of the like-minded and morally decent; they make no sense and are positively harmful in the public sphere, and, a fortiori, in the international sphere. The…
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Defining My Kind of Conservatism Against the Neo-Reactionary Variety
My brand of conservatism takes on board what I consider to be good in the old liberal tradition. I like to think that it blends the best of conservatism with the best of liberalism. A couple of sharp young philosophers have surfaced to challenge me, however. Their brand of conservatism looks askance at paleo-liberalism and…
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A Case for Open Immigration?
The events of the day, and the presence of some sharp commenters, prompt me to repost the following entry which first appeared in these pages on 3 July 2010. ……………. Spencer Case sent me a link to a short op-ed piece by Michael Huemer who teaches philosophy at the University of Colorado. Huemer's thesis is…
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The Fundamental Contradiction of Socialism
Since forcible equalization of wealth will be resisted by those who possess it and feel entitled to their possession of it, a revolutionary vanguard will be needed to impose the equalization. But this vanguard cannot have power equal to the power of those upon whom it imposes its will: the power of the vanguard must far…