Being forced to help isn’t helping. Complying with a threat doesn’t make you a compassionate or moral person. It shows you can be manipulated and easily scared into doing what someone else thinks you should instead of acting on your own values.
Tag: hunger
Codifying Our Worst Impulses: The Ideas that Started World War II
Today (9/1) is the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II, the deadliest violent conflict in human history. Death tolls vary, but often reach 80 million souls. What caused it? Lists of proximate causes never end, but the only credible “root cause” is simply: ideas.
Education Needs Separation From State
Once again we approach that saddest time of the year: when the majority of parents send their kids back to school; back into the local government concentration day-camps. If you’re someone who mistakes schooling for education you probably believe this is good.
“España Es Como Una Madre”
Our most memorable Uber driver in Madrid was a young Pakistani man. We gave him twenty minutes; he gave us his odyssey. Too bad I failed to record the conversation, because this would have been a great interview to broadcast on Spanish radio.
Don’t Fall For The Borderists’ Dishonest Trap
Here’s the dishonest setup followed by the dishonest question: “The question that no open-borders advocate has ever answered is, How many illegals should be allowed into the United States?” He’s a liar.
School Will be Remembered Like Leeches and Cigarettes
How did humans learn stuff the other several thousand years of civilization? How were 80% of colonial Americans literate with no standardized institutional schooling, and when books were rare and costly and most jobs didn’t even require reading? How did people invent stuff, start businesses, write books, create great art, and expand the corpus of human knowledge for thousands of years without certified teachers and grades and degrees?
Could Such a Man Care?
Nicolas Maduro now rules a land of chronic hunger, horrific crime, terrible fear, and mass exodus. How does he maintain his dictatorship? With a pact of steel between his ruling party, the military, the secret police, and on-site foreign allies – especially Cubans. You would have to be mad to think that Maduro’s doing all this for the good of his people, or the good of the world. His only credible motivation is power-lust gone wild. Maduro is a pervert for power.
Governing Least: What’s Really Wrong with Utilitarianism
One argument against utilitarianism is that no one actually follows it. I call this the Argument from Hypocrisy. A better objection, though, is that even highly scrupulous utilitarians don’t comply with their stated principles; I call this the Argument from Conscience.
Some Men Just Want to Watch Mexico Burn
If you share this romantic vision, you might even welcome my analysis: “Yes, I’m inspired by revolutionary idealism. At least they tried.” Yet calmly considered, this romantic vision is inexcusable. Launching a bloody war without even asking, “How likely is this war to improve the world?” is as “romantic” as drunk driving at a playground. Giving revolutionaries credit for “trying” is ridiculous. If you combine brutality with wishful thinking about the consequences, your real goal isn’t to make those consequences a reality. Your real goal is just to exercise brutality.
Hypocrisy and Hyperbole
So how hypocritical are people, really? Exceedingly so. Why? Because humans love hyperbole. When they moralize, they gravitate toward strong versions of their moral positions.