Monday, July 22, 2019

Hypothesis

All reasonable people with my background will realize that "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions" and recognize that laws against "price gauging" are bad "in the long term".

Saturday, July 13, 2019

The issue of The Economist about CONSERVATISM

Charles Krauthammer said he thought worst mistake conservatives made was abandoning the academy.  Worldly Philosophers taught that economists who never leave the academy never loose "their stupidities of youth."

Myron Lynn Good (possibly quoting Winston Churchill) said, If you aren't a liberal when you are young, you have no heart; if you aren't a conservative when you are old, you have no head.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. (See Jay W. Forrester paper.)

Your Only Halley’s
75 years; once in a lifetime

The timescale for the helix.  Technology allows living conditions to improve.

Dr. Brown, my father-in-law, blamed the French for Secular Humanism.

The US Army has lots of liaison officers - an Army person with whom to communicate.

p.9 says "Like classical liberalism, conservatism is a child of the Enlightment."

My political leanings draw upon my my family background, my exeriences, my teachings, and my readings.  A couple of Halley's removed from the US Civil War.

My experinces include reviewing drafts of https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Can-Happen-Christ-Science/dp/1481168126/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1376295353&sr=1-1

When I checked (just now) you could be the first to review this book.

Dr. Brown and I had "the system view" in common.

Last night I tried to relocate the 4th line from the bottom of p. 9 and did not.  On the line it say, "For classical liberals, like this newspaper,".  3 lines below, begins "Both reject the Utopian impulse to find a government solution for every wrong. Both resist state planning and high taxes."

We left the DC Area in 1997 in part because I believed Newt Gingrich would be Speaker of the House after we got rid of Slick Willy in the next Presidential election.  At the time, I couldn't stand the sound of Newt's voice.

Newt is very good thinking government solutions which require less money from the taxpayers.  That means Big Brother can be involved in more of your life.

On p. 10, "Conservatism tempers liberal zeal;..."  My major professor at Wisconsin and Charles Krauthammer say age tempers liberal zeal.

p.17 last complete para left column: "Why I am not a conservative", Friedrich Hayek - I agree with all of the Hayek I understand.

top of middle column:  the nicely turned phrase of Roger Scruton, a British conservative writer, "as a hesitation within liberalism" over the French Revoution.

I had a deficit in my understanding of the French.  The first course [Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida] by Lawrence Cahoone addressed that need.  No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life by Robert C. Solomon
filled that need.

Middle column next para: "Much of what is best in later was built on Burke's response: his scepticism about radical change and his belief, human nature being what it is, the passions of the people must be checked by authority and good judgment. Liberals - including Hayek - often felt that new order would spring into being spontaneously from new freedoms.

I guess the Bushs are liberals.

later in the column:

(1797) by Joseph de Maistre

RH column:  it reads like the work of an 18th-century Rush Limbaugh.

Bottom of column:  It did not need ideological commitments to small government or balanced budgets.

I guess "it" is conservatism.  Maybe that is when I became a liberal.

JFK was a Roman Catholic.  So is Donald J. Trump.

I think a nobel prize went to The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism
Gosta Esping-Andersen (1990)
in Cambridge: Polity Press, pg. 9-54

The USA wins with Italy on family and religion.

p. 18 left column

"resentment against 'elites'--notably, in Europe,those in Brussels -- and 'others' ....In France the ...

Middle column:

"France's Gaullists, ...,have been torn apart by a new liberal party, ...

In 1977, France did not participate in NATO's Military Council.  The WWII de Gaul was President/Premier.

Mid-column:

One thing all these movements share a devotion to pride

I have negative feelings for the emotion pride.  A fellow last Sunday he was proud of our church.  I would be likely to say, "I'm thankful for our church."

Terry Oswalt and I chose Neil de Grasse Tyson as our favorite Great Courses professor.  I remember we were taken aback by his pride in the first lecture we heard.

"Conservatives have respect for a universal human nature;"    See my October 2010 blog about human nature.

Indicators that I am a liberal:

I like Hayek.
I don't like Burke.
I don't like pride.
I learned that "human nature" leads you to do the Christian thing early.
It took me a long time to recognize "that the road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions" although the evidence is obvious.

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

America is great again

Missouri had "the troubles" for six or seven years before the Civil War.  The Battle of Wilson's Creek saved St. Louis for the Union.  One of news magazines featured a story about Missouri the Backward State.  Northern Missouri near Kansas City had Confederate leanings and Southern Missouri near Springfield had Union leanings.

Things were MUCH worse then.

Sean Hannity says journalism is dead.  Mark R. Levin has recently written UNFREEDOM OF THE PRESS.

I think we have TOO HIGH EXPECTATIONS for the press.  Mark Twain did not suffer this handicap.


1) THE COMIC MARK TWAIN READER: The Most Humorous Selections from His Stories, Sketches, Novels, Travel Books and Lectures

By: Neider, Charles (ed)