Curt Doolittle

Theme: Governance

  • CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS: DAILY MOTORCADE every morning they shut down Sahaidichnoh

    CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS: DAILY MOTORCADE

    every morning they shut down Sahaidichnoho street so that the presidential motorcade does not sit vulnerably in traffic.

    Then six or seven cars pass in formation.

    The people I talk to seem to think its a privilege. But the taxi drivers who have served in the military know the reason: the cheapest and easiest way to kill a politician is in a car with an RPG.

    It’s my daily reminder that a government should fear its people. Not people fear their government.

    And that politicians should not give them reason to.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-21 03:38:00 UTC

  • POLITICS Conservatives eat their dead. Progressives resurrect them, and rewrite

    http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/republicans-mourning-mitt-romney/story?id=17742687FUNNY: POLITICS

    Conservatives eat their dead. Progressives resurrect them, and rewrite both memories and history to suit consensus.

    Conservatism is aristocracy. Aristocracy is meritocracy. Meritocracy is objective.

    Even if its language is allegorical.

    There is a difference between arguments and actions. Of the two arguments are less scientific than actions. 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-17 08:36:00 UTC

  • THE RATIONALITY OF THE CONSERVATIVE POSITION ON EDUCATION The conservative argum

    THE RATIONALITY OF THE CONSERVATIVE POSITION ON EDUCATION

    The conservative argument is a) that our children spend more time being indoctrinated into socialism than they are educated. (true after 5th grade) b) that the teachers union blocks reforms to the process, putting teachers above students. (demonstrably true in all cases) c) that we spend more than anyone else and get poorer academic results (the data shows this to be true) d) that we have lost competitiveness in the working and lower classes because of all of these factors, and this has endangered the privileged position of the american economy. (demonstrably true) e) that it is not possible for people with traditional values to avoid oppression of their values by the socialist state. (certainly true)

    ALL of these are legitimate concerns supported by the data. They are not wrong to hold these values. It might be argued that the political necessity of overcoming the difficulty of mixing races, cultures and values is so costly and difficult that we must bear these costs at the expense of our economic privilege. But that is a preference, not a truth.

    The conservatives hold a different preference: the competitiveness of the tribe. They have a broader moral code (see Haidt) that takes into consideration more variables. They value normative capital more highly. And they hold these values at the expense of the individual, and tolerate the consequences of proportionality (meritocracy) in favor of its benefits. They are not irrational, emotional, or cruel. They simply have additional considerations beyond simple maternal caretaking.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-06 02:19:00 UTC

  • CONSERVATIVE STRATEGY IS TO STARVE THE BEAST Linda doesn’t quite get it. I’ll ha

    http://www.angrybearblog.com/2012/10/starve-state-support-traditional.htmlTHE CONSERVATIVE STRATEGY IS TO STARVE THE BEAST

    Linda doesn’t quite get it. I’ll have to write a response. But finally some progressives understand the conservative strategy. No thtat they can do anything about it. Because the middle class is too moral to adopt the progressive philosophy.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-01 13:17:00 UTC

  • THE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT The purpose of good government is to deny people acces

    THE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT

    The purpose of good government is to deny people access to power. To deny people access to violence. To deny people access to fraud. To deny people access to theft. To deny people the ability to abuse ‘norms’. The best government denies people all possible means of pursuing self interest except through the service of each other in the market.

    Now, it is true that there are efforts that are relatively difficult to impossible to undertake without the structure of government, because the privatization of contribution to the commons must be prohibited in all forms of contract. And unlike entirely private goods and private contracts, it is possible to privatize (cheat) from from the public contributions to the commons. But this again, is a negative. Individuals do not need government to conduct these investments. They only need a forum for creating public contracts that bar all members of the citizenry from privatization (theft) of the commons being created by the investment.

    In the end analysis, this means, that the problem of government is the creation of law, and the use of buraucracy rather than contract and private services. Contracts have terms. They expire. They can be fulfilled. They cannot be modified at will by later legislatures. Private firms must survive competition. THey can die off. They cannot become a parasite on investors (the public.)

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-01 03:44:00 UTC

  • POLITICAL TRIBALISM IN THE US VS UKRAINE Even in the UK, where I feel more at ho

    POLITICAL TRIBALISM IN THE US VS UKRAINE

    Even in the UK, where I feel more at home than in the states, I don’t feel about the people the same way I do here. I literally want to hug them at random while walking down the street. THey are beautiful, sweet and wonderful. Partly because metaphysically speaking, they naturally think about government the way that we libertarians do: it’s a corrupt enterprise. And given that it’s a corrupt enterprise we must rely upon personal relationships. Personal relationships then, rather than abstract principles, determine the nature and content of communication between people. The degree to which americans are essentially ‘religious’ about social order is only evident to me in this dramatic contrast, where people have zero faith at all in such abstractions. For all american talk about freedom and liberty, we willfully oppress ourselves from both right and left. And while the political class here is openly predatory and self interested in paternal familialism, the american political class is just as predatory and self interested in ideological tribalism. It’s just the same instinct and process devoid of genetic preference, and obscured by ideological abstraction.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-31 07:38:00 UTC

  • INFOGRAPHIC

    http://dmarron.com/2012/10/29/the-partisan-and-ideological-makeup-of-congress/AWESOME INFOGRAPHIC

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-30 15:28:00 UTC

  • SCARCITY IN EVERYTHING “The single most exciting thing you encounter in governme

    SCARCITY IN EVERYTHING

    “The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it’s so rare.” ~Daniel Patrick Moynihan

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-29 08:05:00 UTC

  • SCIENCE VS SCIENTISM AND RELIGION : THE PROBLEM OF DEMOCRACY There is a fundamen

    SCIENCE VS SCIENTISM AND RELIGION : THE PROBLEM OF DEMOCRACY

    There is a fundamental difference between those who possess the capacity for utilizing reason, those who possess the capacity for comprehending reason, and those who possess the capacity for utilizing rules and conventions, and those who lack the capacity for utilizing any of the above.

    To suggest that science and reason are sufficient devices for cooperation and social order in a division of knowledge and labor, is UNSCIENTIFIC because it is contrary to both evidence and reason.

    Science becomes the religion of scientism and no better than mysticism if it supposes universal application and utility.

    The question remains: why must we advocate one unified means of argument and comprehension, across all peoples within a polity? The answer is that under the irrational religion of secular democracy – those institutions which we currently live under – we suppose unanimity of ability in order to justify the use of state power.

    If you can understand this, you will understand that the problem is not one of science versus religion – which in principle can produce the same ends. But between the false premise of universalism and equality mandated the the institution of democracy.

    It is our political system that is the cause of our problems.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-19 02:26:00 UTC

  • YET ANOTHER FOOL ON THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD OF THE DIASPORA The problem, given Zin

    YET ANOTHER FOOL ON THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD OF THE DIASPORA

    The problem, given Zinn’s writing, is in asking the question what do we mean by obedience? If it means to norms, or to labor, or to the productive results of labor, or to all of the above? Because each of these things involves one or more forms of coercion. Norms require the threat of ostracization from opportunities. Labor requires the application of violence to force people to cooperate according to some scheme that is preordained. The taking of the results of productive labor requires the application of violence according to someone’s preferences. So Zinn may rely upon soft words, but they are meaningless without the means of enacting them. And they cannot be enacted without obedience that is enforced by violence.

    In the end, Zinn is still a socialist: that some person’s view of the common good is superior to another’s, and that words must be used to justify the use of violence against some for the benefit of others.

    The aristocratic model minimizes population in favor of maximum productivity, the socialistic model maximizes population through emphasis on consumption and egalitarianism. Nothing more. These two points describe a spectrum that can only reach compromise in the middle by voluntary exchange between the two modes of operation. Otherwise any imposed homogeneity across both strategies requires acts of violence that serve the genetic preferences and interests of some at the expense of the genetic preferences and interests of others.

    Zinn is just another well meaning fool that does not comprehend this fundamental problem of political action.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-17 08:33:00 UTC