Politics is about working to build the framework for the pursuit of happiness, not the achievement of it; politics helps us establish the preconditions necessary for happiness, but can’t provide happiness in and of itself.
So she called in. After first convincing several producers that she was, in fact, Soledad Ramirez, and had no intention of screaming “bababooey” live on air, they let.
Finally, we must believe that we are pursuing true goals – not merely effective ones. Darwinian evolution leaves no room for the true; it only leaves room for the evolutionarily beneficial.
Where the Athenians were tepid with regard to individual purpose in the absence of community, they were religious in their belief in individual capacity. They passionately advocated the notion of an order to the universe, and insisted repeatedly that mankind had not just the capacity but the obligation to uncover that order.
When doctors don’t know what is causing a disease or how to cure it, they call it a syndrome. When sociologists don’t know what is causing a problem or how to cure it, they call it systemic.
Markets are natural outgrowths of human nature, and natural rights. You own yourself, and you own your labor – and no one has the right to remove that labor from you for the good of the collective without just compensation.
Students are taught to confess their “white privilege” – a key component of the intersectional theory undercutting traditional American notions of individual responsibility and rights.
Thomas Jefferson didn’t write that the government was granted power to grant you happiness: it was there to protect your pursuit of happiness. The government existed to protect your rights, to prevent those rights from being infringed upon. The government was there to stop someone from stealing your horse, from butchering you in your sleep, from letting his cow graze on your land. At no point did Jefferson suggest that government could achieve happiness. None of the Founders thought it could.
What, then, are the easily identifiable factors that lead to lower income mobility for black Americans? First, lack of fathers in the home: single motherhood is one of the most powerful predictors of intergenerational poverty.
We have the ability to treat everyone equally under law; we have the ability to create governments to protect individual rights. But we don’t have the ability to guarantee that even two kids the same age living on the same street will start from the same point; two children growing up in the same family don’t even start from the same point. We certainly don’t have the ability to ensure that everyone ends at the same point.
By ripping away the core components of Unionist government – delegated powers, checks and balances, and federalism – Disintegrationist government heightens the stakes of politics while reducing our common ground. It forces Americans to fight for the high ground of power, lest they be victimized by their opponents, who seek to dominate them using the mechanisms of arbitrary and unanswerable governmental coercion.
Government cannot change the hearts of human beings – it cannot make them that which they are not.
All that will be left are polarized groups, seeking their own interests.
To Aristotle, “good” wasn’t a subjective term, something for each of us to define for ourselves; “good” was a statement of objective fact. Something was “good” if it fulfilled its purpose. A good watch tells time; a good dog defends its master. What does a good human being do? Acts in accordance with right reason.
Like the Bible, Aristotle didn’t define happiness as temporary joy. He saw happiness in a life well-lived.
There are few colleges or universities where parents may send their sons and daughters without their being contaminated with some phase of the vilest of Communistic and allied teaching,” cautioned Roscoe Dorsey of the National Republic magazine.
From its very inception, the goal of higher education has been to challenge the authority structure under the banner of open-minded inquiry.
Authoritarians rarely recognize their own authoritarianism. To them, authoritarianism looks like simple virtue.
As a religious person, I do agree with much of Ayn Rand’s profoundly negative view of religion. Still, to minimize her contribution to philosophy is ridiculous. Her espousal of capitalism is incredibly important, today more than ever before. With taxes rising and government intervening in all sectors of life, her libertarian philosophy is required at least to balance the debate.
Without God, there is no right and wrong... Anything goes. Life loses value, and with that loss of value comes a loss of societal strength.
Men are destructive in the absence of responsibility.