It’s not enough to focus on only the positive parts of yourself. The exceptional person identifies their weaknesses too. Without radical honesty about your limitations, you will always be their slave. Knowledge gives you the chance to improve your shortcomings or structure your life to avoid them. Know your weaknesses, but don’t trust them. Do not think you ignore them.
Tag: authoritarian
“Collective Punishment”
If the kinderprison teacher doesn’t know who is guilty of some offense (real or imagined) he’ll just punish the whole class. This is an extremely common practice in government schools and similar places. I think the lesson this teaches is different than the one authoritarians might imagine.
Should Your Default Response be Authoritarian Violence?
Here’s hoping that every advocate of “closed borders” loses his passport while out of the country, and comes face to face with the bullshit authoritarian violence he condones.
Political Power-Lust Thrives in a Democracy
Under democracy, politicians are less candid about their motives; they need us to like them, and power-hunger is not likeable. But given its ubiquity throughout most of political history, can we really believe that the motive of power-hunger is no longer paramount? One of my favorite political insiders privately calls politicians of both parties “psychopaths”–and he’s on to something. Rising high on the pyramid of power is hard unless the love of power fuels your ascent.
The Malevolence of The Right
As a libertarian, I consider myself outside of the “political spectrum” of left versus right. That said, if I must partner with either a liberal whose greatest sin is his willingness to steal money for humanitarian endeavors or a conservative who gleefully calls for the kidnapping and caging of peaceful people because they grow plants or ingest chemicals of which he does not approve, I will choose the liberal.
Question Authority
Ultimately, the questioning of authority is not only a good thing. It is a necessary thing. It is the backbone of freedom. Cherish the right to protest. Cherish the right to be different. Cherish the right to question authority.
Begging To Be Enslaved
“Unmoored”? Being chained to an aggressive thief makes people feel steady and safe? Can a person like that even be considered a person? Human, yes. I can see that, but without apparent “personhood”. Pitiful.
Excusing Aggression Does Not a Libertarian Make
“Well mostly I want people to be free, and mostly I want government leaving people alone, but in this case, for the good of society, I think it’s necessary for government aggression to be widely used, because the alternative is too scary!”
Patchwork
If actions are not based on the NAP, peace, non-authoritarian, non-nationalist, anti-protectionist principles, indeed, they are just a patchwork of greedy impulses, non-libertarian to an extreme.
Authority and Morality
The decisions people make and the directions that people go in may in the end not serve them or lead to the kind of results that they want, but that is for each person to discover on their own. Advice can be given, suggestions can be made, but ultimately each person must walk their own path themselves. To try to play games of authority is to attempt to ignore all of this.