Are Americans Really Moving to the Left?
Tomb of Karl Marx Photo Credit: Flickr.com/Matt From London These troubled times see Americans traveling in sharply different ideological directions. At least partially isolated from each other … Read More
Tag: Ideology
Descriptions of world-views, systems of ideas and their interactions with other ideologies,
The Limits to Free Speech
Plato’s Academy in Athens Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Raphael (1509-1510) Recently I heard on Fox News of an event that illustrates autocratic tendencies among students at an elite university, and for … Read More
Progressives’ Disrespect for the US Constitution
Ever since President Woodrow Wilson, progressives in the United States have expressed varying degrees of disrespect for the U.S. Constitution, and have chafed over its limitations on the implementation of … Read More
The Interaction of Ideologies: A Bemused Response to “Cheese”
Is this how we should view expert scientists? Image Credit: morgueFile.com/Grafixar This post is a reply to the comments of my friend, whom I will call “Cheese” because of … Read More
A Death Trap of Wishful Thinking
Black flag of ISIS Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham) has just reminded us in … Read More
Morality and Capitalism
All a capitalist cares about? Photo Credit: Freeimages.com/Fernando Mengoni There are many such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Bill Gates, … Read More
Progressive’s Views of Conservatives (2)
Photo Credit: CanStockPhoto.com/dundanim What is it about conservatives that makes at least some progressives want to incarcerate them and otherwise remove them from any influence on society? I can understand … Read More
Progressives’ Views of Conservatives (1)
I have frequently referred to the autocratic instincts of the American “progressive”. It is such a fascinating characteristic of progressives given their self-picture of themselves as the epitome of tolerance, … Read More
The Insuperable Problems of the Democratic Party
Sisyphus and his rock. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Titian(1490-1576), Prado Museum, (PD-US-no notice) In the post Democrats’ 2016 strategy assumes America is lurching left. Are they wrong? in this morning’s theweek.com … Read More
Coming Apart and the Failure of Historical Memory
Anti-war demonstration in Berkeley, CA Photo Credit: Flickr.com/celesteh When I was a child growing up in the 1950s, I absorbed what at the time felt like … Read More
The Proper Functions of Government
The most fundamental ideological division between progressives and conservatives concerns their beliefs on the proper functions of government. What roles do we think should be given to government and what … Read More
The Morality of Wealth
Almost nothing divides the political Left from the Right more than their mutually exclusive views of wealth. Listen to President Obama, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, or Senator Bernie Sanders … Read More
The Ideal Monetary Policy
Decade after decade, the Federal Reserve, under its dual statutory mandates to minimize both inflation and unemployment, has favored the attack on unemployment over that of inflation. Depending on the … Read More
Bending History
We may be approaching in economics what Thomas Kuhn in his seminal book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (reference [S2]), called a paradigm shift. Kuhn laid out scientific history in … Read More
Dialogues and Quora
I have just found a wonderful place on the internet at Quora.com for carrying on dialogues on serious subjects. Readers of this website will recall that inspiring such conversations was … Read More
Economic Effects of Current Tax Policy
One of the biggest sources of problems government imposes on individuals, businesses and the economy is taxes. It has truly been said that “the power to tax is the power … Read More
Ideologies and Conflicts
Cole and Suzanne, this post is for you. How is an ideology formed and what makes us accept its contents as statements about Reality with a capital R? Recently friends of … Read More
The Complexity of Reality
How arrogant people are who think they understand enough about a nation’s economy that they can control it! This thought came to me while thinking about the implicit assumptions progressives make. … Read More
Progressives’ Basic Assumptions
The lady in the photo above, like most others in the conference I am attending, has a sunny, upbeat personality that takes anything that life offers in stride. The conference … Read More
Do Progressives Want a Police State?
Many progressives seem to yearn for a police state. Although I can not believe that all progressives desire a fascist state, even a small fraction of authoritarian-leaning Leftists is very, … Read More
Divided Indeed
What follows is a poem by Mike Martin of Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada. It gives his impressions from this website. Divided yes indeed I say It might take me a … Read More
Why Socialism Does Not Work
Typical grocery store queue in Vilnius, Lithuania, USSR in 1990. Note the bare shelves. Photo Credit: Reddit/HistoryPorn Yesterday I published a post in which I viewed with alarm the rise … Read More
Bernie Sanders and the Road to Serfdom
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) Photo Credit: Wickimedia Commons/Nick Solari This morning I read a very disturbing article by David Harsanyi on the federalist.com entitled “Bernie … Read More
The Disqus Community
I love the Disqus community! Disqus (it is pronounced “discuss”) is a community of people on the internet (URL: https://disqus.com) who want to comment on everything under the sun. Actually … Read More
The Evolution of Modern Economic Theory
In order to understand why the Federal Reserve has chosen its policies of the past three decades, we need to understand the New Keynesians. The response by neoclassical economists to the … Read More
Is Democracy the Best Government? Is It in Danger?
These two questions might seem rather strange, coming from a citizen of the United States. Yet I have been alarmed by a number of blog posts from people on the political Left … Read More
France in Distress
My sister-in-law has just sent us the URL of a truly amazing news video about France and the economic and social troubles it is undergoing. Click here to see it. … Read More
The Need for Dialogue
My main motivation for starting this website (other than to give myself a platform for venting my opinions) was to start conversations. What this world desperately needs is more dialogues … Read More
Economic Effects of the Dodd-Frank Act
The Dodd-Frank Act is the solution to a problem that does not exist, and is therefore totally unnecessary. The causes of the 2007-2008 financial crisis were not private sector greed … Read More
Civil Disobedience (Continued)
It seems like Charles Murray’s call for conservative civil disobedience is garnering more interest. An interview of Murray by a somewhat skeptical Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic magazine has just … Read More