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…]
The state as we know it in the United States and most countries in this year of 2011 can’t be limited without destroying that state. This is because — in Jeffersonian terms — the state as it currently exists in most countries is an instrument of a vague group of human beings which we could … [Read more…]
Love is probably undefinable but we can at least understand some aspects of that love and can probably come to a substantial narrative understanding of some loves in their specific contexts. We can maybe even understand some of the ways in which a truer and incorruptible love will make the world of the resurrected, heaven, … [Read more…]
I haven’t had any health-care for ten years or more. Haven’t seen a doctor. Have only had special blood-tests when donating blood a few times. I’ve been lucky for sure but it’s also likely that I’ve gotten good advice from non-interventionist doctors who told me to avoid the medical system as much as possible. To … [Read more…]
Here’s a link to a good article about some specific problems which have developed in the Medicare system, resulting in fraud: The Systemic Nature of Medicare Fraud. Some of us are crooks for sure. Why do those crooks all of a sudden have the power to bankrupt our society and destroy our middle-class prosperity? Years … [Read more…]
In the poem The Sycamore, Wendell Berry straddles some no man’s land between metaphysics and theology and poetry to give an interestingly aslant and insightful definition of narrative: It [the sycamore] has gathered all accidents into its purpose. As characters in the narratives which are our individual lives, we should gather all accidents into our … [Read more…]
I’ve used a chunk of this quote in an earlier posting ( The Liberal Mind: What is politics?): Now what makes liberal individualism so plausible is that the individual is the only self-conscious entity whose limits appear to correspond to a physiological creature; and also that the thoughts and feelings which constitute institutions such as … [Read more…]
I’ve advocated the view that our imaginations can encompass what God has created, what the Almighty has manifested in this Creation, but we need examples and stimuli — in a manner of speaking. We need to be courageous and open-minded in our responses to Creation if we are to learn from God, who has a … [Read more…]