The Associative State?

Just a random thought this morning: history has progressed to this point, and seen several revolutions in the formal arrangements that govern societies. Since pre-history, people lived in chaotic tribal groups, often warring with their neighbors.  Power and leadership coalesced around the warlord.  Eventually warlords ceded some power to a King, who could ensure a [...]

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Moral Question for Lefties

As a philosophy major, I’m prone to indulge silly questions from time to time.  From the previously mentioned, and excellent Bourgeois Virtues, I got my mind tangled up with this question:  Is the redistributive state inherently amoral, as it violates Kant’s second categorical imperative to never treat people as means?  Quoting Feser’s On Nozick: Respecting [...]

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Reading List

Quick suggestions of things I’ve read recently, am reading, or want to read: The Bourgeois Virtues – Dierdre McCloskey Professor McCloskey makes the argument that commercial society, and the resultant exponential and unprecedented skyrocketing quality of life post-1800, came about not because of technological changes but because the ethical nature of capitalism.  I got to [...]

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I Almost Want to Read This

So Ralph Nader wrote a book.  A book about Warren Buffett and Yoko Ono and Phil Donahue and George Soros and a Parrot.  And it’s a novel.  Color me fascinated. From the Journal’s review of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us: In Mr. Nader’s tale, billionaire investor Warren Buffett is so dismayed by the ineffectual [...]

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Realism, Idealism and Reaganism

There’s an interesting post from The Next Right discussing the schism between “realist” and “idealist” conservatives. It’s intriguing, but I’m not sure it’s productive. There will always be a tension between ideas and practice. I’m not convinced that we should encourage ‘resolving’ that tension one way or the other. Ideology informs practice, and practice, to [...]

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