thoughts in and out of season
It seems there’s mostly bad news for us most of the time; but there is actually some good news in the news:
Khmer Rouge tribunal approved Cambodia is planning a “UN-backed tribunal to put leaders of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime on trial.” I’ve always thought that Pol Pot is the greatest evil, the greatest … More ...
A first-rate summary of why making individual autonomy the ultimate political standard doesn’t work: The Tyranny of Liberalism And Its Evil Root: Individual Autonomy as the End of the State. Sample quote:
… More ...“[N]o polity could be grounded in an ideology, which is nothing more than an aspect of a cultural inheritance about which one
I just finished reading The Long Truce: How Toleration Made the World Safe for Power and Profit, by A. J. Conyers. It’s a book-length treatment of a constant theme here at Turnabout, that “tolerance” as a principle—the demand that standards other than money, power and the like be treated as purely personal commitments … More ...
It seems there are pleanty of people speaking out about their sexuality. However, there seems to be an uneven representation of sexual morality views on some popular websites. For example, SexEditorials.com has a lack of moderate and conservative views on sexuality even though they allow all points of view on their site. I wish I … More ...
Not a book everyone would find useful or interesting, but I’m getting something out of it: Ride the Tiger, by Julius Evola.
The author calls the book “a survival manual for the aristocrats of the soul,” although in concrete fact I’m not sure there is such a thing in his sense. Still, it’s … More ...
The deconstruction of race, gender and whatnot rolls on:
Following Great Britain’s lead in setting up an Orwellian, surveillance-camera-ridden society (see here: http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=08032002-020813-4448r , and check out these chilling, official British government posters boasting of their “watchfulness”: http://www.samizdata.net/~pdeh/Big_Brother_is_watching_sml.jpg
http://www.samizdata.net/~pdeh/watchful_eyes_bus_03_sml.jpg
http://www.samizdata.net/~pdeh/Croyden_500_CCTV_sml.jpg ), Chicago has now decided to follow suit, creating a linked network of over 2000 surveillance cameras: http://abclocal.go.com/wls/news/print_090904_ap_ns_camera.html
Perhaps I’m naive, but I find … More ...
Given the threats that exist, a defense budget of 50 Billion Dollars(or less) is sufficient.
Getting rid of 80% of our current military hardware would end the crime of replication of roles and missions.
We need intelligent, slimmed down and very professional military. 100,000 men should do it!
People who haven’t dealt much with difficult family members and co-workers are sometimes puzzled when someone takes an utterly indefensible position, insists it’s beyond question, and refuses to budge. The strategy’s rational in the right setting, though. If someone who can’t simply be gotten rid of (wife, brother, colleague, pastor, CBS news, whoever) insists that … More ...