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.
Tag: protest
Are You Being Played?
I suspect Scott Adams has been playing his listeners. I’ve suspected this for months, but have only discussed this with one person. Until now. I’ll go ahead and tell you now what I think has been going on. I believe he is using the technique of “pacing and leading” to get his “conservative” listeners to change their minds on “climate change” (and a few other topics as well).
Compulsory Schooling Laws Aren’t Progressive, They’re Inhumane
Someone asked me recently if I could wave a magic wand and do one thing to improve American education what would it be. Without hesitation, I replied: Eliminate state compulsory schooling statutes. Stripping the state of its power to define and control education under a legal threat of force is a necessary step in pursuit of education freedom and parental empowerment.
What Parents Can Really Do to Help Prepare Their Teens for Success
Regardless of how you may feel about climate activism, the key message to parents is that school can be stifling and anxiety-inducing for many teenagers who crave and need meaningful work. Adolescents are meant to come of age within the adult world, surrounded by a diverse group of mentors and engaged in authentic, real-life pursuits. This gives them both experience and personal reward.
Climate Strike
I was the chauffeur last Friday who took my youngest granddaughters to the Climate Strike demonstration in front of the Fayette County, KY, Courthouse. I did this at the request of their mother, my daughter, the hydrologist who works for the Kentucky Environmental Protection Agency. The young women are a teen and a pre-teen on the cusp. These may seem to be odd arrangements and relationships for someone, such as I, who has a very decided stance on global warming.
People Who Are Fully Alive
The thing is, I’m one of those people who wants my drivers to leave me alone. But that’s because nine out of ten times they make boring small-talk, complain about weather or traffic, or spout off half-baked political rants. But when you have an encounter with someone fully alive? You could talk about meditation, sports, geology, or airplanes. It doesn’t matter. If they’re wide awake and alive about it, you feel it too and leave the encounter with more fuel in the tank then when you started.
Klein on Groupthink
I don’t regard left-wing domination of the humanities and social sciences as the world’s most-pressing problem, or even the world’s tenth most-pressing problem. As I explained in The Case Against Education, educators simply aren’t very persuasive, so they do far less intellectual damage than you’d think. Indeed, despite their teachers’ biases, well-educated Americans tend to be social liberal but economically conservative. How is this possible?
Why I’m Optimistic About Venezuela
If you’re too young to remember the collapse of Communism, this is a tiny taste of the sweetness of 1988-1991. When’s the last time you had reasonable hope of dramatic peaceful pro-freedom change in the world?
Parkland and Covington: Two Schools, Two Causes, One Lesson
The two incidents may seem at most tenuously connected, but taken together they constitute teachable moments for young political activists — and for those who rush to decry perceived mistreatment of those activists.
Rainwater’s Motivated Reasoning
If a brilliant, eminent, and mainstream scholar of the 1960s could be right for such wrong reasons, the brilliant, eminent, and mainstream scholars of today could easily be mired in their own brand of motivated reasoning. Indeed, so could you. Or me. There’s no easy remedy, but the first step is being hyper-aware that we have a problem.