Influences II

With every week that passes, I think of new names to add to my list of influences.  But the thinkers shown in today’s effort are those with the names that I carry around in my head — writing them down as a reminder is not needed.  Today, I will write about Dr. Robert Higgs, Henry Louis Mencken, and Mark Twain, whom I have mentioned, probably, in reverse order of each’s world renown.

A Diamond Buried in Manure

This show—the part about space travel and space exploration, anyway–is simply dripping with statist elitism, but there is one bombshell hidden therein, uttered by Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Legislation should be based on objective truths, not on some belief system you happen to have for yourself that others are in conflict with.”

Influences I

Whenever someone asks me which philosophers I follow, I very quickly branch off into persons who do not seem to be philosophers within the narrow meaning of the term, lover of knowledge. But how could Mark Twain possibly be not that? If asked who are the great wits, I will come up with a list from all over the place. In what universe would we think Lewis Carroll was not as witty as could be?