Social Matter

Deontology vs. utilitarianism is for schoolmarms. The teleological approach to rights and natural law is far more instructive and useful. Not even Hume can escape teleology. Justice, according to Hume, is an artificial virtue, which springs from the difficulties that scarcity presents. Justice here is related to property rights. He notes that where there is no scarcity of goods (e.g., water and air) there are consequently no disputes, since they are easily accessible by all in abundance. And, as he further points out, land in some country is also viewed this way—it being so plentiful that no rules are really […]

The common method that minorities use to shift public opinion is to adopt a radical position, and then to speak towards the political center. Radicals establish moral authority through their zeal combined with their usually superior intelligence and knowledge. Frequently, they’re able to access greater concentrations of funding for their pet causes than the political center can, because they can articulate a more specific program. This is the way that the left operates, and one of the reasons for its enduring success during the era of popular government. When leftists sense a threat, they tend to project that the threat […]

On August 9th, after smoking marijuana, an 18 year-old Black, Michael Brown, and his friend, Dorian Johnson, 22, robbed a convenience store in Ferguson, a predominantly black suburb of St. Louis, MO. A security camera in the store captured Brown stealing a box of cigars and then getting physical with the shop-keeper, pushing him into a display case. Such an afternoon does not seem out of character for these two young gentlemen. Michael Brown was a product of teenage parents, his mother and father being 16 and 18 at the time of his birth, respectively. He was raised by a […]

Michael Luciano, writing in The Daily Banter, wants you to know that white Evangelicals in America have a “grossly overdeveloped sense of victimhood.” And he’s got the opinion polls to prove it. You can read the full article here, but the argument is simple. According to a recent Pew Research report, about 50% of white Evangelical Americans agree with the statement that “there is a lot of discrimination against Evangelical Christians in America.” And this, to Luciano, is obviously unconscionable, considering the fact that everyone knows its white Evangelicals with their bigoted hatred and hateful bigotry who drive so much discrimination […]

This is the final installment of my trilogy (See: The Era Of Security, The Era Of Equality) on time, dealing with the era of Liberty.  I’ll go light on the historical part in order to discuss how ideology interacts with the flow of time and especially the role neoreaction can play. In truth, the era of Liberty is more interesting to live in than to describe.  This is when anything seems possible.  Population grows, and with that comes territorial expansion in the form of colonization and conquest.  Trade and technological development proceed rapidly.  In every material sense, the era of […]

Western governments have constructed bureaucracies to reward malingering behavior. In return, ordinary people have responded to those incentives in enormous numbers, prostrating themselves before medical authorities, proclaiming all kinds of strange ailments. Doctors and pill-manufacturers invent new ailments as rapidly as old ones fall out of fashion. The facts are less important than the plausible construction of theories. Syndromes are particularly popular for this, because they can be diagnosed based upon symptoms alone. Many people will happily rewrite the entire story of their lives based upon a syndrome invented in an addled brainstorming session with an ad agency executive, some […]

It’s been my observation that, when someone tells you to stop thinking in terms of “left vs. right,” they’re always in some sly sense complimenting themselves. On their sophistication as analysts. On the complexity of their worldview. They want you to recognize that they’re not a narrow-minded partisan, someone who can only parrot the talking points handed down from party headquarters. (That’s what those racist, red-state FOX viewers do. They’re the ones who oversimplify political affiliation.) They want you to recognize that they’re capable of drawing their own conclusions, of crafting their own platforms, independent of the chattering groupthinkers surrounding […]

Last week, I argued that ideologies are proxies for thedes. There are about five posts more queued up in my head, which all unpack the concept in different ways, but I’ll only explore one here. It’ll help keep the blood from leaking out of your ears, owing to all the autism. Ideologies are proxies for thedes, and so are policy instruments. Employ a little bit of Bayesian reasoning for a moment. If you encounter someone who refuses to label themselves while simultaneously advocating for extensive health and safety regulations in the workplace, minimum wage laws, child labor laws, a progressive […]

Universal basic income arguments have become increasingly popular, thanks to high-profile advocates like Charles Murray, who is in turn adapting a proposal by Milton Friedman for a ‘negative income tax.’ [1] I haven’t had the time to read Murray’s In Our Hands, so I can’t address what he says in that directly. In any case, the majority of people that you’re likely to run into who argue for basic income tend to shave off the serial numbers of their arguments, instead just pretending like the idea came to them through the ether. Because many of the advocates for it are […]