In this short essay, Classical Liberalism versus Anarchism, Mike Rappaport tries to shift the focus in a debate about anarchism vs. classical liberalism. He quotes Robert Higgs, an advocate of anarchism: My difficulty arises not so much from a dissatisfaction with government’s being charged with protecting the citizens from force and fraud, but from a … [Read more…]
I’ve just finished reading Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly and considered it a perversely entertaining read about a disedifying aspect of much of human history—the sheer stubborn stupidity of many political leaders. After quick discussions of Jeroboam, son and successor of King Solomon, and the legend of the Trojan Horse—which likely had some historical … [Read more…]
This essay is written in response to an article which is highly rational and not `conspiracy-minded’ according to the current mind-set: Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever. This article deals with the price-fixing activities of money-center banks and allied financial institutions, activities which are proving to be wider ranging and larger in scale … [Read more…]
This, What Keeps the States United?, is a well-written and clearly reasoned review by Joseph Baldacchino of a book, Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century edited by Donald Livingston. (I haven’t read the book though I’ve read writings of some of the authors.) It deals with the general problems in American political and … [Read more…]
This article, The Invisible Hand Illusion, deals with a laboratory testing trick by which psychologists can make people feel as if they have an invisible hand. Ed Yong writes: Hold your hand up in front of your face. It is patently obvious that the five-fingered thing in front of you is your hand, and the … [Read more…]
There’s a recently published essay, Sex After Christianity, which is interesting and insightful and tells a sketchy story of the loss of Christianity in the United States (probably the entire West), a story which might be sketchy but is more plausible than what you might gather from the way most Christians speak and far more … [Read more…]
In this preview of a Scientific American article, Urban Living Raises the Risk of Emotional Disorders , the question is raised: [U]rban migration represents one of the most dramatic environmental shifts human beings have ever undertaken. So one might be tempted to ask: How are we adapting to our new digs? Part of the answer … [Read more…]
There is a short article, Myth of Family Meals in Parent-Child Bonding Gets Debunked , which speaks in a common-sense way though the title is rather misleading. What the underlying study and the article point out is that family meals are a result of healthy and strong relationships between parents and children rather than being … [Read more…]
I’ve argued repeatedly that we need to accept that we live in a world of evolutionary and developmental processes. This isn’t just a matter of intellectual correction. Much of the suffering in recent centuries was caused by our prideful attempts to control dynamic entities, even our own children, as they go through maturing processes of … [Read more…]
I don’t think we ever had our religion in the United States, at least not a true Biblical religion. From an early period, immigrants to this country considered themselves largely freed of the traditions of their home countries, including their Christian traditions. They thought to retain the title of `Christian’ without letting anyone tell them … [Read more…]