It is preposterous to declare first that you will not be ruled by absurd people, by absurd process, and then turn around and embed another absurd set of process, including an arcane method for selecting unaccountable rulers, to destroy your freedom.
Category: Nobody Asked, But
Sand Castles
A severe case of the End justifying the Means: Seize any laudable goal, then build a sand castle around it, ignoring that even the most minor chink in the foundation will evolve into a chasm.
Free Lunch
What’s the difference between the free lunches offered by POTUS-Elect and by POTUS’es-also-ran?
Divide and Bloat
Nobody asked but … The one set of law, civil, is too simple to support an oligarchy. It can operate virtually without legislation. Criminal law demands infrastructure (which provides institutional and inertial weight). Its legislation is of infinite extension, like Mandelbrot patterns. Corporate law is an attempt to overcome the simplicity of civil law. Kilgore…
Burn-in
Nobody asked but … Burn-out is a well-known problem. It happens when reason is overheated by passion, but further when that ardor generates friction. Like a meteor entering an atmosphere, our enthusiasm begins to consume itself. There is a cost, paid in self-destruction, when one meets ignorance and apathy on every path, anger and aggression…
Small Samples
I have begun reading Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature. It’s a bit of a rocky start. His premise is that we are, as a species, becoming less violent. He offers the idea that out of Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel, the murder rate was 25%. The scam here is that if you…
Headlines II
Nobody asked but . . . Now here is a reasonable headline for the instant case discussed previously, “Ohio Supreme Court rules on police officer accused of having sex with a minor.” The headline and a reasonably well-written account of the actual case appear here. The crux is that prosecutors, who choose to proceed under…
Headlines
Nobody asked but … A thing worse than judges making looney decisions is the media loonies’ misreporting of logical decisions. Here is a major network headline — “Court Rejects Ohio Law That Bans Police From Sex With Minors.” Headlines are supposed to be a means of finding which stories to read, not a deception, as…
False Dilemma
Nobody asked but … One of the reasons why a dilemma can be false is that life, in reality, seldom sorts itself into two distinct and mutually exclusive choices. The more classical definition of the false dilemma is where one person tries to convince another that the failure of A will certainly cause the advent…
Involuntary?
Nobody asked but … I don’t recall a day, in my 73 years on this planet, in which I was confined to a condition of involuntaryness for more than 12 hours. And I only use that number as a placeholder — I really can’t remember even that long of a drought of free will. Sure,…