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5 Politicians Nobody Will Dress As This Halloween ...

ashok sent a shout to kpearce   40 days ago

For Republicans: On Creating an Educated Party

ashok sent a shout to kpearce   40 days ago

Preachy and long but reads quickly. Hope you like it, and if you disagree, please write it in the comments - I am hoping to get feedback.

Does Power Corrupt? Really?

ashok sent a shout to kpearce   41 days ago

Short. Hope you like it.

FTA: "The consequences of distrusting the very holding of power have been fatal for us. We, as Americans, can barely say as a whole “terrorism is bad,” because that means fighting and other mean things. We incessantly ridicule the people we elect for office merely because they ran for office. Anarchism is an ideal for both those on the Left and the Right, and morals are perceived as a relic of an age where power was necessary."

Professor William Ayers and the Corruption of the Academy

ashok sent a shout to kpearce   42 days ago

This is a really long post, so I'll sum it up here:

1. The academy is about making money, so how do Bill Ayers and all his radical views fit in? The obvious answer is that the academy, weirdly enough, uses him for its own purposes.

2. Ayers' article "Narrative Push/Pull" shows how a radical can blind himself to how he's sold out. In "Narrative Push/Pull" he uses moral relativism - he defends the IRA and implicitly himself - to advance the idea that everyone has a story to tell. His end might actually be noble, if it weren't for the means.

3. The problem with the means is that stories depend on morality in some formal sense. You can't really make sense of a story unless it affects how you view things on a deep level.

4. This confusion means he misreads his own legacy - the truth is, this is his world, he's won academia and the culture wars. He doesn't see that and thus doesn't see how he's marginalizing minorities. He misreads his own narrative.

Why were Hamilton & Madison opposed to a Bill of Rights?

ashok sent a shout to kpearce   43 days ago

Commentary on Federalist 84 that's pretty easy to follow - the crucial arguments against a Bill of Rights are:

1. Listing rights means the federal gov't can legislate/invoke authority over things it hadn't thought of.

2. You typically retain rights when the sovereign is separate from the people. Saying "we the people" and then listing rights is contradictory to a fault.

3. Rights don't mean anything unless the gov't is properly run anyway. The Soviet Constitution lists nothing but rights, tons upon tons of them. Somehow it didn't add up to much.

Quite obviously, I'm for a Bill of Rights, it's a critical part of our heritage. But Hamilton's reasoning isn't stupid.

Why were Hamilton & Madison opposed to a Bill of Rights?

ashok sent a shout to kpearce   43 days ago

Commentary on Federalist 84 that's pretty easy to follow - the crucial arguments against a Bill of Rights are:

1. Listing rights means the federal gov't can legislate/invoke authority over things it hadn't thought of.

2. You typically retain rights when the sovereign is separate from the people. Saying "we the people" and then listing rights is contradictory to a fault.

3. Rights don't mean anything unless the gov't is properly run anyway. The Soviet Constitution lists nothing but rights, tons upon tons of them. Somehow it didn't add up to much.

Creating Statesmen: Aristotle on What is Naturally Right

ashok sent a shout to kpearce   53 days ago

Addresses the typical argument "If everyone disagrees on laws, then there can't be any such thing as justice," moving through Aristotle's views on that and the foundation of government.

Want Statesmen? Then You Need the Liberal Arts

ashok sent a shout to kpearce   55 days ago

The Federalist Papers - written in defense of the Constitution by no less than Alexander Hamilton and James Madison - emphasize protection of private property so we can be free and secure. They do this to the detriment of things like "honor," which can be considered fictional b/c it isn't real like "money." But can a society without honor live?

Beyond 2008: How Do We Create a Better Politics?

ashok sent a shout to kpearce   76 days ago

FTA: "I’d be lying to you if I told you that the academy in the US wasn’t rabidly Leftist; I wish I could be more balanced about this, but I’ve been through it, and I’ve said before the only way we’re going to get a balanced education is to make the various parties in this country educate truly regarding their own ideologies."

Creating Statesmen, Part 2: Democracy, Oligarchy and Athens

ashok sent a shout to kpearce   88 days ago

This article is a reading of a portion of a Socratic dialogue, complete with background and commentary. The issue is what we need to bring to politics so it isn't merely class warfare.