Donald Heath died earlier this year, unexpectedly. He was my age, and we’d known each other since our university days, so his death was both sad and sobering. Mortality is often a future abstraction, but the loss of a unique, special individual makes it sharply real. The immensity of its finality becomes overwhelmingly present. Memories […]
My friend Don Heath Read More »
“Weary of liberty, he suffered himself to be saddled and bridled, and was ridden to death for his pains.” Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther.
The Fable of the Horse Read More »
[Posted here as an example of nineteenth-century nihilism integrated with violence and destruction as a means to a revolutionary end.] The Revolutionary Catechism By Sergey Nechayev (1869) The Duties of the Revolutionary toward Himself 1. The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no personal interests, no business affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no property,
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Here is the flyer (click to enlarge) for a full-day event in Buenos Aires: The event’s theme is taken from the first two parts of my forthcoming book Liberalism: The Meaning of Political Life. In Socratic Seminar format, the participants will be discussing and debating the best arguments for and against liberalism. I’m not there
Debating Liberalism — FRI event in Buenos Aires Read More »
A scenario beloved of ethicists, public policy experts, and management consultants asks you to imagine yourself on a lifeboat. Built into such scenarios are powerful assumptions with life-or-death consequences, so as we work through the lifeboat scenario try to make those assumptions explicit. Here we go: You were flying over the Pacific, but bad weather
por Stephen Hicks [This is a Spanish translation of “Our Che Guevara Problem”, first published in English at EveryJoe and then translated into Portuguese at Portal Libertarianismo.] Es muy probable que alguien que conozcas tenga una camiseta del Che. Versiones románticas del rostro barbudo de Ernesto Guevara Lynch son muy populares en los campus universitarios y
Nuestro problema con el Che Guevara Read More »
[Below is the text of William James’s “The Moral Equivalent of War” [pdf].] The Moral Equivalent of War By William James [Based on a speech delivered at Stanford University in 1906. Published in 1910.] The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party. The military feelings are too deeply grounded
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I went on a spring-day drive through rural Illinois and ended up in Ogle County’s Oregon, a farm town along the Rock River that is also the county seat. The north side of the courthouse square has a war memorial, with two slabs of granite engraved with the names of those who died in the
Ogle County’s war dead Read More »