An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
Albert Einstein
Pro-Liberty Quotation For the Day
"Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."
H. L. Mencken (HT Libertarian Republic)
Force vs. Persuasion
On multiple occasions in posts, I've referenced Sister Mary Christine Morkovsky, whom no doubt would not particularly care for many of my political opinions. Not from direct conversation (I don't ever recall discussing politics with anyone while in academia, including professors, my own or colleagues). But I recall reading an autobiographical piece which described some events (after I graduated from OLL); she mentioned teaching a course in liberation theology and later apparently taught philosophy at some seminary. She didn't go into specifics but implied that she had differences with a misogynist administrator at the seminary. I am more a traditionalist Catholic, meaning more focus on individual redemption vs. the Church's attempts to accommodate the culture, emphasis on social justice concerns, etc. Even while I was more of a social liberal during my salad days, I was never comfortable with the pervasive "progressive" ideology in academia. As big brother to 4 sisters and 9 nieces, I've considered myself a feminist of sorts; I even had a reputation to that effect: I can still recall getting invited to join a table of coeds during lunch at the college cafeteria. The girl who invited me over said something to the effect, "We heard you treat girls just the same as the guys." I almost choked on my food and muttered back, "Gee, I hope not! I'm attracted to girls...." The issue I have with ideological feminism has to do with stridency, victimization philosophy, and statistics abuse. I will say this much of Sister Morkovsky: she was one of the best professors I ever had or met, male or female. We may have differing political and/or theological perspectives, but I still respect her.
Why am I mentioning Sister Morkovsky? She had done scholarly research on Henri Bergson, particularly notable, at the risk of oversimplification, for the philosophy of change. (Oddly enough, she never specifically discussed Bergson in the classes I took from her.) As a rare double-major in math and philosophy, I was interested in areas of overlap, like mathematical/symbolic logic. Two British intellectuals, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, had published an important related work, the Principia Mathematica. The reason I mention this is that Whitehead later in his career unexpectedly went into a different direction, developing a process philosophy that to some extent was influenced by Bergson's work.
Mark Skousen, an Austrian School economist/libertarian/investment writer, mentions a short essay of Whitehead's in the Adventures in Ideas ("From Force to Persuasion") and this particular excerpt that was an inspiration for his libertarian perspective:
“The creation of the world — said Plato — is the victory of persuasion over force… Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals…
“Now the intercourse between individuals and between social groups takes one of these two forms: force or persuasion. Commerce is the great example of intercourse by way of persuasion. War, slavery, and governmental compulsion exemplify the reign of force.”I've seen the second paragraph quoted elsewhere in describing Whitehead's political philosophy as libertarian without the label. I believe I have a copy of Whitehead's essays in my personal library but haven't read it years. Nevertheless, the excerpt is an excellent summary of my perspective on the use of force (i.e., government) in domestic and international matters.
A recent series of essays in the Libertarian Republic on the topic of why Christians make great libertarians quotes fourth-century Church Father St. John Chrysostom from his tract On the Priesthood:
For Christians above all men are forbidden to correct the stumblings of sinners by force...it is necessary to make a man better not by force but by persuasion. We neither have authority granted us by law to restrain sinners, nor, if it were, should we know how to use it, since God gives the crown to those who are kept from evil, not by force, but by choice.We are talking about acknowledging moral development of the self-actualized individual. And, no, I don't mean the pushing-on-a-string "progressive" paternalistic Obama nudge squad (e.g., we'll make the default decision for you--say, a universal supplemental retirement plan, but you can opt out by jumping through hoops):
Statist Self-Justification
Summers Withdraws from Fed Reserve Chair Consideration
California Declares War on Low-Skill Workers
The Democratic-dominated legislature passed a measure increasing the minimum wage to $10/hour, which Legal-Plunderer-in-Chief Jerry Brown indicates he'll sign, despite clear evidence that the market-clearing wage for low-skill/inexperienced workers is below the existing minimum wage: with "friends" like these, who needs enemies? Yet more compelling evidence of economic illiteracy among clueless Democrats...
Are We Rome?
My Greatest Hits: September 2013
Just a disclaimer here. I think since the beginning of the month that pageview stats have been skewed for some odd reason (e.g., Blogger stat bugs or Russian spammers?) which aren't dovetailing with audience stats and general post trends (it's not clear why some older posts are getting up to 4 times more pageviews than my newest post today. It's possible, of course, that someone stumbled across recent posts on Internet searches and the posts have circulated by word of mouth. There was a time I posted international pageview statistics (mostly western Europe) and then it seemed almost overnight I got lots of Russian pageviews; I didn't believe I cultivated a large following in Russia, say, rivaling my American readership. I did some Googling on the topic and discovered several bloggers experienced a similar issue. (Apparently they do so to lure the unsuspecting blogger into clicking on the source link; most bloggers aren't that stupid.)
An Infographic on the College Loan Bubble
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| Courtesy of NonProfitCollegesOnline HT Econintersect |
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Gary Varvel and Townhall |
The Jackson 5,"T he Love You Save"
