Governments are properly servants of their citizens. But if you’re a politician without principles or a dictator wannabe — and it does not matter if the issue is religious belief, marijuana use, or Covid — the pattern is always the same: * First, you paternalistically order citizens to comply, rather than advising and recommending free […]
Covid over-reach from paternalism to military dictatorship Read More »
RIPOL Classic Publishing (Moscow) has published a Russian-language edition of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. Here’s an image of the final version of the cover. The book’s thesis: The failure of epistemology made postmodernism possible, and the failure of socialism made postmodernism necessary. Information about other editions and translations is here.
Russian translation published: *Explaining Postmodernism* Read More »
Coming in August 2021. “In this small but powerful book you will discover: * how modernist reduction led to postmodern nihilism; * why postmodern aesthetics is self-defeating; * how understanding this enables to us to unseat it and replace it with meaningful art; * how good aesthetics leads to flourishing ends; * and how being
New short book from Stephen Hicks and Michael Newberry Read More »
NASA government budget: $23.3 billion. That’s money taken from citizens via compulsory taxation. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic budget: Less than $1 billion. That’s money earned through voluntary trade. Which one is being complained about says much about the moral character of the complainer.
Budgets: NASA versus Branson’s Virgin Galactic Read More »
Deb FIllman long-form interviewed me for The Reason We Learn. Topics (with timestamps): 00:00 Preamble 01:49 Introduction 02:01 Global Problems are Too Big for Children 06:29 Intentional Indoctrination? 07:43 Is the current educational crisis philosophical? 09:48 What is it to be a human being? 11:04 The conflict of visions 16:28 How would you describe the
Education: Crisis or not? Deb Fillman interviews Stephen Hicks Read More »
A striking line from German-American historian Walter Laqueur on early 20th-century transformation of the arts: “The painters were fascinated by ugliness; the composers threw harmony overboard, gradually moving towards dissonance; the poets and playwrights were preoccupied with the madness of great cities, parenticide and rats emerging from rotting corpses.” (Laqueur, Walter. Weimar: A Cultural History,
“Fascinated by ugliness” Read More »
1. Batista first came to power in Cuba by being elected to office. He ran as head of the Democratic Socialist party, a coalition supported also by the Cuban Communist Party. The image is of an election poster. (History lesson: Beware of democratic socialists. They’re often wolves in sheep’s clothing.) 2. The US-embargo means there
Two tidbits on Cuba: Batista, embargo excuse-making Read More »
My 20-minute talk for the City of Ideas festival in Puebla, Mexico is online here. In English with Spanish subtitles. I use four examples — two good and two awful — from the history of medicine to frame my recommendations for transforming education.
Entrepreneurial Education — Medici, Locke, Rothschild, Semmelweis Read More »