Posted in Democracy, Freedom, Liberty, Politics, Rationalism, political theory on March 28, 2008 | 1 Comment »
My favorite book I’ve read this semester has got to be Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition.
Next up would be Friedrich V. Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty. This is research for a paper, but I’ve really enjoyed it. So far, I have eleven pages of quotes from the book. Here’s a few good ones.
“While the [...]
Posted in Current Events, Democracy, Ethics, Politics, Tyranny, tagged civil disobedience, Duchy Trachtenberg, feminism, gender, gender identity, identity, law, lobby, locker room, montgomery county, not my shower, queer politics, restroom, Trachtenberg, transgender, Tyranny, women's health, women's rights, women's safety on February 13, 2008 | No Comments »
Thanks to County Councilmember Duchy Trachtenberg and the unanimous vote of our County Council, my county now has a law that will go into effect soon, allowing transgendered males to use any women’s restroom facilities that are open to the public. So a man with alternate “gender identity” can use the women’s locker room at [...]
Posted in Democracy, economics on January 2, 2008 | No Comments »
A tariff is a tax on the importation of a certain good. Tariffs are imposed for various reasons, the most common being protectionism. The reasoning claims that the tariff will create a certain barrier to the importation of the good, giving a competitive edge to faltering domestic industry.
However, this type of policy actually damages the [...]
Posted in Democracy, Immigration, Politics, government on December 21, 2007 | No Comments »
The Cato Institute reports:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/pr-immig.html#contents
[note: this report is 12 years old. I don't think so much has changed between now and then so as to alter its conclusions.]
Posted in Democracy, Ethics, Tyranny, government on August 14, 2007 | No Comments »
Uncle Sam (or his Pennsylvanian cousin) wants to force this farmer to pasteurize his proven safe raw milk product. Read:
Civil Disobedience in Pennsylvania: “Tyrants Will Rule If No One Stands Up for the Truth,” Says Raw Milk Combatant
They’re trying to tell us how to eat our food…
[Full disclosure: My family purchased their milk from the [...]
Posted in Democracy, Faith & Reason, philosophy, political theory on June 22, 2007 | 1 Comment »
http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110009472
What are libraries for? Are they cultural storehouses that contain the best that has been thought and said? Or are they more like actual stores, responding to whatever fickle taste or Mitch Albom tearjerker is all the rage at this very moment?
If the answer is the latter, then why must we have government-run libraries at [...]
Posted in Democracy, Ethics, Organizations, philosophy, political theory on April 8, 2007 | No Comments »
From Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (Mansfield trans.):
“I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America.” (244)
“In America the majority draws a formidable circle around thought. Inside those limits the writer is free; but unhappiness awaits him if he dares to [...]
Posted in Democracy, Ethics, Evangelism and Apologetics, Faith & Reason, literature on March 7, 2007 | No Comments »
Driving back to school I was listening to this opening paragraph from Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, and it stuck in my mind, as it seemed to show, not only an insight for paradox, but a keen and perceptive understanding of the nature of the French Revolution and its adversaries.
IT WAS the best [...]
Posted in Current Events, Democracy, Evangelism and Apologetics, Faith & Reason, Politics, Reformed Theology, political theory on February 9, 2007 | No Comments »
Political philosopher Eric Voegelin wrote in his book The New Science of Politics: “From the Gnostic mysticism of the two worlds emerges the pattern of the universal wars that has come to dominate the twentieth century” (151). Central to the immanentist vision which Voegelin criticises is a strong faith in and regard for the basic [...]
Posted in Democracy, Politics, political theory on January 3, 2007 | No Comments »
I’m now 50 pages into Eric Voegelin’s The New Science of Politics, and boy is it dense. Part of his thesis is that we use certain words very sloppily when speaking of political societies–words like “representation”–and so he invents an alternate vocabulary to express specific ideas. Also, his style is very passive and wordy, so [...]
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