When some voters complained in a former administration that POTUS was not following through on campaign promises, others advanced the theory that it was addictive behavior when someone thought that merely saying so made it so. For example, tobacco fiends often believe that people will believe them if they just announce from time to time that they are quitting.
Category: Nobody Asked, But
Natural Law Is Inevitable
I hadn’t meant to go on a 10-day hiatus, but I have been reminded again that Nature will not be denied. Some will contend that Natural Law can be debated, because it is like the flimsy excuses for laws that statists devise — sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn’t.
Unreliable Narrators
On a podcast today, I heard the most descriptive term I have encountered in a long time, “unreliable narrators.” That is a universally useful concept, as the problem seems epidemic among humans.
Explanation and Truth
Truth that is covered by many layers of explanation is useful, but the truth may be that the explanations are false. A thing which has no explanation may, nevertheless, be true. Only explanations that can be tested, that clearly show their underlying truth, that do not have confounding associations and byproducts can be connected directly to the truth.
An Ill-Conceived Idea
We have been operating with a roadmap (The DOI and the Constitution, among other tent poles) that tends to institutionalize the weaknesses of humankind rather than to remedy them. The idea of POTUS, in particular, signaled the controversial poor choice to retain a monarch (although not hereditary) but then to vest in that monarch saintly responsibilities. It was wishful thinking.
75 Times Around the Sun
Yesterday I observed the 25th Anniversary of my 50th birthday. On the original occasion, I opined that, like Merle Haggard, I could say “my life’s been grand!” I said at the time that I had lived a great half-century, therefore no matter what happened to me after that I could say that most of my life had been grand. The facts of the matter are that the continuing quarter-century has been even grander.
Three Obstacles
We will always have much the same emotions that Adam and Eve had. Institutions will always militate against change, and even when they do change they will only update to new institutions. Institutions are static steps in the dynamic process of change. And technological matters will always seem god-like because they change while the former two don’t — technological change is outside the box.
Five Takeaways from Harry Browne
Nobody asked but … On Wednesday, April 25, the Harry Browne Facebook Page posted this meme. Five takeaways: Anyone who considers themselves actively trying to maintain anything, can label themselves “conservative.” Or capriciously, arbitrarily, “liberal.” Anyone who considers themselves actively trying to change anything, can label themselves “liberal.” Or capriciously, arbitrarily, “conservative.” Neither appellation considers…
No Clue
I heard a Federal Government bureaucrat/spokesperson on the radio on my way to work this morning. An amount of hot air was gushed that would make a political hack blush. The bureau in question was the Department for Homeland Security (you know, the wholly fictitious entity which was created by the equally fictitious War on Terror).
That Which is Not Seen
Bastiat and Hazlitt have such good arguments for the long term and the not seen, that we may make the mistake of denigrating the short term and the seen. The true caution, however, is that neither — short or long, seen or unseen — should be viewed as independent of the other.