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…]
I’m trying to deal with a problem I feel to be at the foundation of a body of thought which I generally admire — libertarianism of the Old Right and Rothbardian sort. On the whole, my attitude is similar to my attitude towards Jamesian pragmatism. For a discussion of that attitude, see my earlier articles … [Read more…]
I’m reposting an essay originally published on September 21, 2009. First, I’ll make a few comments. I seem to fall into a line of thinkers, Tocqueville to Hawthorne to Melville to Henry James the Elder to Mark Twain to Flannery O’Connor with the British guy Graham Greene joining in. This line of thinkers have tried … [Read more…]
In The Liberal Mind Kenneth Minogue, the British political theorist, tells us: “Need” belongs to a particular language of political and moral thought arising from the conception of generic men. Once we have entered into that language, we can only say individualist things. It is a language which has grown out of the liberal movement … [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…]
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…]
Not long ago, I posted an essay, Is Power for the Sake of Power the Same as Power Earned by Productive Achievements? where I responded to a study which found: [T]hat individuals in roles that possess power but lack status have a tendency to engage in activities that demean others. According to the study, “The … [Read more…]
On a regular basis, commentators of various viewpoints will re-evaluate what we Americans have done in Afghanistan and other occupied countries, wondering whether we could have acted more effectively. Some even express a bit of concern for the impact of our actions on the innocent civilians who have been killed or injured or impoverished in … [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…]
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…]