I’m republishing this 1956 college commencement address by Leonard Read because I noticed a broken link in my post about What is a Generalist. FEE has since republished it in HTML on their website, but I’m not a fan of their layout and republishing it here will ensure it doesn’t
This is actually a very old post from an old Yahoo group I had where we’d recommend movies and then write about the philosophy we saw expressed there. I posted another of these some time ago about a movie called In The Company of Men. This one is about a
I recently had a Facebook encounter with someone who objected to the use of the terms right to life and right to property because he felt these terms confused people into thinking that they had a right to life in the sense that if they couldn’t manage it, someone else
What is red? It’s a color, you say. Well, yes, but that doesn’t really explain anything, does it? Okay, it’s a wavelength of light. Yeah, nope. That doesn’t help, either. Red is an experience. A very particular experience. After all, why does that wavelength of light correlate with the particular
Gaia: What are you made of? Uomo: Skin and bones and stuff. Gaia: And what are skin and bones and stuff made of? Uomo: Um… cells? Gaia: And what are cells made of? Uomo: Chemicals? Gaia: And what are these chemicals made of? Uomo: I don’t know, lots of things.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ~George Santayana I must admit I’m having a difficult time suffering fools lately. People think these differences in politics amount to a difference of opinion. “Let’s agree to disagree,” they say. But it’s much more like someone saying 2+2=5
It often happens in arguments with the general public that people ask for an empirical example of whatever economic (or political) principle I’m attempting to explain. In truth, it’s sometimes worse. They ask for an empirical example, but really they are appealing to authority under the guise of wanting a
[The following story about the famed American icon Davy Crockett was published in Harper’s Magazine in 1867, as written by James J. Bethune, a pseudonym used by Edward S. Ellis. The events that are recounted here are true, including Crockett’s opposition to the bill in question, though the precise rendering
This essay was written December 24, 2003 by the late Mitchell Jones (of The Dogs of Capitalism fame). It was originally posted to my old Yahoo group debatepolitics which has not been active for years now, but is still worth poking through if the subject interests you. (The original post
Depending on your point of view, my title for this article either makes your blood boil, or else you are cheering. Good. Either way, that should keep you reading. A few days ago I noticed a tweet that posed the question of whether or not the states had the right
Yesterday I was musing about writing a new post. Specifically, I wanted to talk about the difficulty inherent in writing on political topics. This difficulty stems from a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is the reaction you will get from people who don’t agree with you. The
Yes, this is still the no-so-Weekly Word. But this word will pretty much define 2013 if only because it is one of the words that the great mass of unwashed people totally misunderstand. It is also a word you will hear bandied about by fools who imagine that if only
I’m sooooooo bored. Honestly. If you are wondering why I don’t write much, this is largely the reason. That, and the fact that I am a perfectionist writing about deep philosophical issues. But largely, I’m bored. And the reason is this. After a while you realize that for a lot
Ok, this one caught my attention on Wikipedia because of some of the inane opinions on the Talk page. Now, never mind the conversion to an “ism” – as both autodidacticism and autodidactism are indeed words – and with that I’d like to remind people that just because your spell-checker
I just discovered this one a short time ago while working on an article about language. Here’s the definition based on the Wikipedia entry: Polysemy: the capacity for a sign, word, or phrase to have multiple related meanings. It is usually regarded as distinct from homonymy, in which the multiple
