Monday, December 29, 2003

Social We Abuse

Via Arts & Letters Daily an essay penned by Roger Kerr entitled “The ‘We’ Word: And the Tyranny of the Majority." From Kerr’s piece,

"In modern speech, Hayek writes, the adjective ‘social’ is applied indiscriminately to a huge number of nouns in a way that undermines their original meanings and recruits them into a collectivist cause. Take the idea of justice. Let’s say that this means the fair and impartial application of legal, moral and perhaps customary rules. But precede it with the word ‘social’ and everything changes. Social justice may require redistributing property and treating people unequally. In this way the word ‘social’ empties the nouns it is applied to of their meaning."

The only “we” should be; we are each and every one of us sovereign individuals.  If, individually, each of us would respect the fact, of our individual sovereignty, and every other individual’s sovereignty, the word “we” would not be misapplied.

Posted by John Venlet on 12/29 at 05:57 AM
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A Borrowed Quote of the Day

"There is ultimately no difference between what’s most moral and what’s most pragmatic in the long run. Those who sacrifice moral principles in search of short-term gain will only gain Pyrric victories and find that their goals will continually elude them."

Scott Bieser

Via Russell Whitaker at Survival Arts.

Posted by John Venlet on 12/29 at 05:52 AM
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Religion, Manners, Law

Kim du Toit reprints a piece he wrote in July 2002.  The piece is entitled “Bring Back Morality and Manners" and is worth a look.  A paragraph from Kim’s post.

"Religion and manners, properly observed, have served our society well over the centuries, and it’s wrong to toss out everything on the basis that when employed to their extreme, they cause harm."

Posted by John Venlet on 12/29 at 05:36 AM
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Sunday, December 28, 2003

Drink, Drank, Drunk

In The Sunday Herald, online, there is an article entitled “‘The stereotypes of the male and female drunkard are the same as they’ve ever been. In a man alcohol is the harbinger of violence; in a woman, casual sex’," written by Vicky Allan.  The title, pretty much gives you an idea of what will be discussed within the piece.  The piece ends this way,

"To drink is freedom, abandon, losing our dignity, our ever restraining self-consciousness. It’s also to succumb to a social pressure that defines and limits our interaction with other people. As Dorothy Parker once said, “All excess is ill, but drunkenness is of the worst sort. It spoils health, dismounts the mind and unmans men. It reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous and bad.”

And therein lies its appeal. It’s all the things ladies aren’t supposed to be."

I enjoy a drink or three myself but find those who can’t handle their liquor, male or female, for the most part, boorish.

Via J. Orlin Grabbe.

Posted by John Venlet on 12/28 at 10:20 AM
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Similarities at 70

David W. Livingston, a professor of philosophy at Emory University, looks at political events in the USSR and the US at the age of 70.  The piece is entitled “The Litmus Test for American Conservatism." The concluding paragraph from the short piece.

"The Democratic and Republican parties are Lincolnian parties.  Neither honestly questions the limits of federal authority to do this or that.  In 1861, the central government broke free from what Jefferson called “the chains of the Constitution,” and we have, consequently, inherited a fractured historical memory.  There are now two Americanisms: pre-Lincolnian and post-Lincolnian.  The latter is Jacobinism by other means.  Only the former can lay claim to being the primordial American conservatism."

Via George F. Smith at Strike the Root blog.

Posted by John Venlet on 12/28 at 07:53 AM
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Understand Anarchy

Roderick Long receives a response from Robert Bidinotto in regards to an earlier posting by Long on anarchy entitled “Anarchism as Constitutionalism: A Reply to Bidinotto."

Both pieces by Long, and Bidinotto’s ideas on this subject, deserve your time.

Posted by John Venlet on 12/28 at 06:18 AM
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It Is to Laugh

Ha, ha, ha.  Laughter comes in all styles, from the obnoxious emanations of Fran Drescher to the bordering on uncontrollable, tears running down your face laughter of Jonathon Winters as he improvs.  I’m not even going to get into the laughter that afflicts one observing the absurdities of political life surrounding us.  Tyler Cowen notes a new book on laughter, written by neuroscientist Robert Provine, entitled "Laughter, A Scientific Investigation." Cowen provides a link to a summary of Provine’s laughter investigations and admits to hating being tickled.

Posted by John Venlet on 12/28 at 06:01 AM
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What the Fuck?

That F word is used in a myriad of ways today, few of them having to do with sexual intercourse.  It’s a common epithet, exclamation and exculpatory adjective; no fucking way.  It’s a colorful word no doubt.  John T. McWorter, writing for the Washington Post, looks at the F word and the FCC’s recent ruling that proclaims the F word is not “patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium." Yeah, tell that to my mother.

The entire piece is here.

Via Arts & Letters Daily.

Posted by John Venlet on 12/28 at 05:45 AM
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Saturday, December 27, 2003

Sound Reasoning

From the Ayn Rand interview, linked below.

"PLAYBOY: . . . And that any free nation today has the moral right—though not the duty—to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba, or any other “slave pen.” Correct?

RAND: Correct. A dictatorship—a country that violates the rights of its own citizens—is an outlaw and can claim no rights."

Got that?

Posted by John Venlet on 12/27 at 01:05 PM
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Ayn Rand Speaking in the Past

Arthur Silber locates Ayn Rand’s Playboy interview from 1964 via The Future of Freedom Foundation.  Arthur posts a couple of quotes from the interview and I’ll quote Rand’s response to the first question posed.

"I seek to provide men—or those who care to think—with an integrated, consistent and rational view of life."

Read it all.

Posted by John Venlet on 12/27 at 12:37 PM
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The Saudi Three Ring Circus, Under the Big Top

Brought to you by the Council on Foreign Relations, the Saudi Three Ring Circus has Shi’ite clowns, Wahhabi clowns, secret police fools, religious police morons and it is all orchestrated by the competing ringmasters Crown Prince Abdullah and Prince Nayef.  Read all about it.

The essay, written by Michael Scott Doran, is entitled “The Saudi Paradox," and though the seven page piece is scholarly, the antics and acrobatics of this circus will astound.

Via Kathryn Jean Lopez at The Corner.

Posted by John Venlet on 12/27 at 07:43 AM
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Yeah, Like That's Going to Happen

An unsigned editorial in the New York Times has this to say about Senator Ted Stevens (R), of Alaska.

"There is only an amorphous criterion against behavior that brings “shame” upon the Senate. So far, the Ethics Committee has offered no hint as to whether the senator’s home-state dealings merit official shame and sanction. We would hope to see Senate clubbiness at least ruffled by Mr. Stevens’s blithe dealings."

The catalyst for this unsigned statement is the fact that Stevens somehow, ala Hillary Clinton investment techniques, managed to parley a 50K ...investment tailored for him by a developer into a personal fortune of perhaps a million dollars or more in real estate.

Don’t expect any statements of condemnation from the senate.  I am thinking, though, of writing Senator Stevens.  I happen to have access to 50K and I’m wondering if he and his developer have any other such wonderfully profitable investment opportunities available.  Maybe he and Hillary, in a beneficient act of bipartisanship, could walk us all through the steps needed to succeed in the world of lucrative investments.

Posted by John Venlet on 12/27 at 04:08 AM
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Quote for the Day

"We live in a land of abounding quackeries, and if we do not learn how to laugh we succumb to the melancholy disease which afflicts the race of viewers-with-alarm.  I have had too good a time of it in this world to go down that chute."

H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy, Preface, pg. xxiii

Posted by John Venlet on 12/27 at 03:54 AM
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Friday, December 26, 2003

Sing it Loud and Clear

Who, as a high school kid, didn’t utter threats under their breath, or conjure curses, uselessly, against their teachers, parents or others in authority over themselves?  Anyone?  OK, I see one or two do-gooders raising their hands, so they’re excused and allowed to join the moronic zero tolerance lobby.  They’ll fit right in.

Godless, over at Gene Expression, alerts us to the story of a fifteen year old Wisconsin honor student, who cut his own rap album, outside of school, which, becaue it contains “scary” lyrics, at least to the principal of the school, may get him expelled.

Godless’ post, entitled “Assimilated Indian?" also provides the etymology of the word thug, something I did not know, and additional links to commentary on this subject.

Posted by John Venlet on 12/26 at 04:22 PM
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Execrable

There is nothing, in my mind, that can excuse a supposed “leader” of a country uttering something as inane as this.

"It is important to call peace by it true name: social justice."

Spoken by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil.

Via Claire Wolfe.

Posted by John Venlet on 12/26 at 04:00 PM
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