George Floyd did not find himself with a knee on his neck for almost 9 minutes because Derek Chauvin is a racist. No, he found himself being killed because Derek Chauvin, and his many cohorts, are authoritarians.
Tag: religion
Curiosity: The Master Impulse
Curiosity is the greatest threat to concentrated power and prestige, so those who have power and prestige labor endlessly to create the mind-killing opposite of all curiosity. Consensus. Obedience. Being seen as “normal”, “in the know”, “respectable”.
Setting an Example
My parents gave me the gift of deciding many critical issues on my own. They told me there were religions, and it was my responsibility to either choose one or reject all or to cherry pick among several. They never asked me to select a political bent, although they were both dyed in the wool Democrats, but my Dad was a dixiecrat, prejudiced, and fiscally conservative, while my Mom was a Bostonian liberal, who broke the color line on Chattanooga city buses. I was watching them.
Cultural Diversity Requires Cultural Homogeneity
The diversity of a city like New York has historically come not from “diversity training” a bunch of diverse people, but by bringing together a bunch of very culturally-distinctive people: Italians, Irish, English, Puerto Ricans, Eastern Europeans, Jews, African-Americans, Germans, Chinese, and so on. None of the real people who created the initial conditions for cultural diversity were themselves hailing from diverse environments.
Neither Pandemic nor Panic Supersede the First Amendment
I double-checked, just to make sure. Neither the First Amendment nor either of those US Code provisions include an “unless someone jumps up and down and screeches that there’s an emergency” exception.
Love the Very New and the Very Old
Futurists seem to miss the fact that old things contain worthwhile wisdom and usefulness. Traditionalism seems to miss the fact that static institutions become corrupt without change. Meanwhile, the modernists are so tied up in the recent past as to be blind to both tradition and innovation.
Villages to Cities to Villages?
The benefits of technological progress are astounding and I wouldn’t trade them. The benefits greatly outweighed the costs, which is why just about everyone who had the chance chose it. But shifting living arrangements were (often) one item on the cost side of the ledger. It was sometimes necessary, not necessarily optimal.
Don’t Need Rescue from Everything
If you believe you need politicians to save you from a virus or from someone’s gun, then you’ll keep handing control of your life over to anyone who promises to rescue you. Whether they actually can or not.
Reflections on the Leiter-Caplan Debate
It was a pleasure debating Brian Leiter last week. The resolution, to repeat: “Social democracy is preferable to market capitalism, but ultimately America will need to move towards a socialist system.” Here are some thoughts I failed to fully articulate at the live event. As always, I’m happy to publish any reply my opponent wishes to compose.
Moral Approximates
Careful examination of real-world conflict does occasionally uncover not moral equivalents, but moral approximates. Though the two sides’ moral status is not precisely equal, they are morally more-or-less the same.