Consider the death of a right-wing dictator. Chile’s brutal Augusto Pinochet died in 2006: “In 2011, the Chilean government officially recognized 36,948 survivors of torture and political imprisonment, as well as 3,095 people killed or disappeared at the hands of the military government.” I was no fan of then-president George W. Bush. Yet his White […]
Two dictators’ deaths — responses from Bush, Trump, and Trudeau Read More »
1. The modern economic debate: Should free-markets or socialism replace feudalism? [Late 1700s to early 1800s] 2. Free-market-ish experiments run in many countries (USA, New Zealand, etc.) — all generally successful [1800s and 1900s] 3. Socialist experiments run in many countries (Soviet Union, China, etc.) — all failures. [1900s] 4. At the same time, Third
Eight steps to Trump Economics Read More »
Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State (1871) Chapter 1 Who is right, the idealists or the materialists? The question, once stated in this way, hesitation becomes impossible. Undoubtedly the idealists are wrong and the materialists right. Yes, facts are before ideas; yes, the ideal, as Proudhon said, is but a flower, whose root lies in
Bakunin’s God and the State [text] Read More »
From National Post, during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: International tensions spilled into competition on Friday when an Egyptian judoka refused to shake his Israeli competitor’s hand following their bout at the Rio Olympics. Or Sasson stepped forward to shake Islam El Shehaby’s hand after defeating the Egyptian fighter, but El
Olympics, Israelis, Islamists Read More »
The long-term estimated death toll from the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India is about 15,000 people. To put that in context, consider that the estimated immediate death toll from the Soviet Union’s 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster is 4,000. The death toll from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear radiation leak in 2011 is zero. And the death toll
The Bhopal Chemical Spill Disaster — Who Is to Blame? [Good Life series] Read More »
Was race a major factor? The table shows the voting percentages in the last three presidential elections for four racial-ethnic groups: Thought 1: White support for the Republican candidate was stable across the three elections (55, 59, 58). But white support for the Democratic candidate declined (43, 39, 37). My takeaway: Trump seems not to
Trump and the Racial Vote Read More »
Remember Adam Smith’s consoling words, however the election turns out.
“There is a great deal of ruin in a nation” Read More »
[This column is a part of the Theist vs. Atheist series debate between Stephen Hicks and John C. Wright. This is Hicks’s response to Wright’s column. Here are the links to other columns in the series.] To evaluate religion’s track record we need to specify our evaluative benchmarks and identify whether we are evaluating religion generically
Religion and the Verdict of History [Theist vs. Atheist series] Read More »