As a man dedicated to stopping the widespread abuse of children, I am very much an ally in this particular fight (“Me too.”). I don’t deserve to be attacked like this. These people don’t know me and the work that I do. They don’t know the trauma I’ve suffered and its long-term effects, effects that I deal with every day of my life. They were wrong to do what they did, but they are not alone in carrying responsibility.
Tag: action
Resentment Not Hate
Full-blown “hate” is a rare motive. But that hardly means that political actors are well-intentioned. The emotional spectrum is wide. And the emotion I routinely see in politics is not hatred, but its milder cousin: resentment.
Thoughts on Internal Values and Instincts
We all want someone who we share values with, and is funny and we can share a good time with. However, I think people often get too clouded by problematic ways of thinking to understand there is something much deeper going on. We haven’t surpassed nature, we won’t, and we can’t.
WTF?!: An Economic Tour of the Weird, by Peter Leeson
As far as content, the book combines eight real world behaviors that make you say “WTF?!”, derived from Leeson’s research and published papers. Everything from shaking a poisoned chicken to settle a slight, to convicting insects and rodents of crimes in a court of law are examined, revealing sensible, even brilliant logic.
Is Mass Schooling Behind The Anxiety Epidemic Among Teens?
While the Times article describes various tactics schools and therapists use to address mounting teenage anxiety and depression, one question not asked is this: If schooling is causing these serious problems for teenagers, then why are they going?
The World Doesn’t Pay You Enough to be Nasty
There’s a reason why we like to get nasty. It’s a lot easier to start a fight than it is to take charge of your life when things seem out of control. Our desire to manipulate others often stems from the need to compensate for our own inability to feel a sense of agency in relation to our goals. We enjoy pulling other people’s strings because those are usually the only strings we know how to pull.
“Me Too” is a Branch Issue, and a Distraction
My first reaction to this campaign was a bit of umbrage on the part of lumping the many degrees of sexual harassment in with the many degrees of sexual assault. They aren’t the same. I shared that first reaction on Facebook in a couple of places and got some interesting discussion going. But as I thought about it some more, I realized what was going on here.
Very Different Kinds of Anarchists
If your vision of a stateless society involves ‘covenant communities,’ HOAs, lifetime employment contracts, private prisons, punitive executions, and “no shoes, no shirt, no service” signs enforced at gunpoint, we are not advocating the same thing.
Kidnappers and Dangerous Psychopaths
If I ran someone off the road, forcibly pulled them out of their vehicle, put them in shackles, threw them in my vehicle, and transported them to a cage where I locked them up, I would rightly be regarded as a kidnapper and a dangerous psychopath.
Is Secession by Referendum Libertarian?
My concerns about group (not individual) secession are over the process of peaceful separation, namely, the referendum. Libertarians have long criticized political democracy — that is, the settling of “public” matters by majority vote either directly or through so-called representatives — as inherently violative of individual rights. By what authority does a majority lord it over a minority? Well, doesn’t this critique apply to referenda on secession?