I wrote a short piece about the basis of power in the American constitutional system, and the Tenth Amendment Center was kind enough to publish it on their Tenther Blog!
Category: Philosophy
I watched a great video from Michael Boldin over at the Tenth Amendment Center the other day. Even though it was one of their shorter “Fast Friday” episodes, Michael touched on a very interesting topic: happiness and freedom. He argued that the Founders placed extreme value on freedom, to the point where several of them said things to the effect of: “You cannot be truly happy unless you are free.” That simple but profound statement got me thinking.
I’m going through Human Action again, and this section just jumped out at me. It’s the most succinct, clear, and beautiful takedown of the anti-market mentality, and how democracy is inferior to markets, that I’ve read in a long time.
The corresponding bit of Human Action is here, for your own reading pleasure.
A bunch of topics all together this time. What is the Macro Trick? It’s the combination of things that are fundamentally different under one name. It’s a tool that many tyrants and would-be tyrants use to take control of politics, economics, and culture.
It feeds the demand for administrators, technocrats, and other “experts.” In this video, I have a breakdown of some egregious examples of this trick, as well as what we can do to fight it.
Also available on Bitchute.
And, right on schedule, barely a week after I say something nice about James Lindsay regarding his evaluation of Marxist offshoots as cults and his studies into Gnosticism and its modern incarnations, he decides to spout off ignorantly about secession, parroting the most absurdly weak arguments all the while maintaining a childishly mocking tone against any and all opposing voices.
So, I’m finally cracking open my copy of Ryan McMaken’s Breaking Away, and getting to work on something about secession, because apparently even reasonably intelligent people are unable to understand how the principles of secession and radical decentralization are the most promising hope we have for peace and diminution of the state’s powers.
Expect a few essays/videos soon, including a review of Breaking Away.
…This comes right as I had had a great idea for something on the absurdity of taxing unrealized economic gains that looks like it might get put on the back burner, at least for a bit. Oh, well.
James Lindsay’s recent episode of his New Discourses podcast (ep. 108) talks about Gnosticism, related doctrines, and how they relate to modern neo-Marxist thought. By his own admission, he’s having trouble organizing his thoughts on the topic and he wants others to start thinking about them, so I made a summary with some commentary as an exercise.
Categories
Beware Reductionism!
Reductionism is an incredibly useful tool. You can get rid of meaningless or poorly-supported fluff and tighten up your argument or a system you’re thinking about.
Problem is, it can be overused or used for the wrong reasons, and if you do that, you can make quite a mess for yourself.
Here’s a short video about the dangers of misusing reductionism, with a bunch of definitions and examples!
Also available on Bitchute.