In response to a recent article of mine entitled Entitlement Is Unnatural, a friend of a friend on Facebook decided to take exception there. Not knowing much about this person’s take on the world, I attempted to patiently walk her through the issues. At length, this conversation would reveal quite a dysrationalic streak in her thinking.
The conversation follows below with her name changed so as not to be patently embarrassing. Continue reading
It appears that I might just be unworthy of the website, Upworthy.com. Having never heard of it before, my interest was piqued when I read this description on a friend’s Facebook post:
NOTE: The following piece is in the public domain, so I host it here without hesitation as one of the most poignant and powerful witnesses against the injustice of providing charity (whether personal or corporate) from the public treasury. WARNING: This piece might not be historically accurate, so I make no claims as to its historicity. The reason I post it here is because of the validity and efficiency with which it makes the argument against lawless charity. Please do not assume the purported facts of the piece to be true, but focus on the principles it extols. Further, I hope my readers will resist the temptation to think that I believe that charity is bad. My objection is to charity given from the public treasury when the charter and/or constitution of the government making such disbursements does not empower it to do so.
By David Crocket. Compiled by Edward S. Ellis.
One day in the House of Representatives, a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The Speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose: Continue reading
Our family has been working on switching to the Paleo diet this past year. We’ve had our struggles doing it—issues such as travel and living far from suitable markets, as well as more embarrassing items such as the occasional lack of discipline and/or will power. All things considered, however, we find the Paleo diet highly favorable and look forward to getting back “on the wagon” as soon as we’re done traveling. Continue reading
I do not like this definition. Please read the article.
I don’t normally like to get into discussions about “conservatism” or “liberalism” because not only do I find those words troublingly undefined, but I find those who use them to be far too cavalier for my taste—bantering about without really caring to define things exactly. In this present case, however, I’m making an exception.
I ran across this image (see the black t-shirt image) at Facebook today and had to share my take on it. While it is clever, it also misdiagnoses the true state of things. It says: “liberalism: moochers electing looters to steal from producters!”
My response to this t-shirt is as follows: Continue reading
NOTE: The following thoughts were posted in response to someone at DailyPaul.com asking the question posed by the title of this page.
To your question, where have all the inventors gone?, I have no statistics to offer, and I have not made a study of the question. I do, however, have some observations. For what it’s worth:
1. I observe that the Expertise Bias is alive and well in America. Many are conditioned to leave invention to the “experts” and simply never entertain the idea that they themselves might get involved in the game. Somewhere in their schooling, Continue reading
If we were to observe nature at work, and if we were willing to anthropomorphize the cosmos, as if it had human qualities, what might we say that the cosmos “owes” to new humans who are born into it?
For example, we might suppose that the cosmos is obligated to give humans air, since there is an abundance of that here, free for the breathing. And then there’s the warmth of the sun, as well as the day/night cycle. These are free to all. And, of course, you can’t be born without parents….though this one’s a bit messier example for reasons that would distract from the intended conversation if we were to detail them. Then there’s gravity. And what else am I missing? (Things that ALL new humans enjoy here.) Continue reading
What follows is an essay I posted in response to a participant’s complaint at DailyPaul.com. The complaint was about quarreling amongst Liberty Movement people.
“Eureka! I’ve got it!”
“Ah, so that’s the answer!”
“Holy Cow! We’ve been wrong all along!”
“OK, I think I’ve finally got it figured out.”
These kinds of moments are fairly common in my house. Between Kay’s studies and my own, it seems we are regularly discovering or making sense of things that had previously been mysteries to us—quite like putting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in their proper places. Continue reading
I have long been a critic of LO2ERS, which is my preferred shorthand for Lesser-Of-2–Evils voteRS. My primary concern is that they typically congratulate themselves after having “held their noses” and picked the candidate they consider to be the “lesser of two evils”, as if in so doing, they had done a good thing for our society. What they fail to notice, however, is that they have not done a thing at all to reform anything to any appreciable and lasting degree. Continue reading
