Curt Doolittle

Theme: Truth

  • NON-ANSWER: ON ECONOMICS AS A SCIENCE I was actually offended by the hypocrisy o

    http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/robert-j–shilleron-whether-he-is-a-scientistANOTHER NON-ANSWER: ON ECONOMICS AS A SCIENCE

    I was actually offended by the hypocrisy of Shiller’s post, given that economists, at least those who act as public intellectuals, by speaking and writing, do almost nothing EXCEPT advocate or criticize policy. They do little BUT legitimize the state’s conduct of involuntary experiments on us while maintaining plausible deniability, statements of clean hands, and outright denial.

    I drafted an essay on this topic to point out the reasons for confusion, as to which statements, concepts actions and methods in economics are scientific and which are not.

    I’m tempted to call it, for marketing reasons ‘THE FINAL WORD ON …” economics as a science.

    Since nothing can actually ‘be’ anything, the correct question is: “Which actions and propositions practiced by people who work in the field of economics reflect the actions and propositions demonstrated by scientists in the hard sciences, and which are not?”

    I just tried to sketch the different ideas here, and I can’t do it quickly and put any meaning into it. So that will just have to wait until I have a weekend to work on it. But the answer is obvious: Its really useful investigation. But whether it uncovers constant relations is questionable, and whether it has predictive power is certainly false, and where it embraces moral hazard with bloody hands is damning.

    FURTHERMORE

    On the same lines, the more interesting question is, given any problem, are mathematical statements or computer science statements more scientific?

    Given mathematical platonism, and that mathematical platonism is an empty verbalism obscuring causality (yes it is) because no mathematical statement is free from representation in operational language, are mathematical statements made in math department language true, or are they falsified, or are they merely analogies or riddles?

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-13 16:22:00 UTC

  • PROBLEM OF RATIO-MORAL VERSUS RATIO-SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS (interesting) “Ratio-Sc

    http://www.propertarianism.com/tools-and-techniques-for-political-debate/a-list-of-terms-for-use-in-evaluating-political-debate/THE PROBLEM OF RATIO-MORAL VERSUS RATIO-SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS

    (interesting)

    “Ratio-Scientific vs Ratio-Moral Argument”

    Historically, Political speech has been structured morally:

    I) as an expression of positive or negative reaction (IRRATIONAL SELF)

    II) as an appeal or pleading (RATIONAL BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS)

    III) as a polemic or criticism (RATIONAL AND ARATIONAL TO AN AUDIENCE)

    To express one’s feelings or reactions without the structure of reason, is not a debate. It’s just sentimental expression. It’s an opinion poll but not an argument. It’s an expressed reaction without a request for opinion. But it’s not an argument.

    To enter into debate, one forgoes one’s right of violence. Theoretically in pursuit of the truth, for mutual benefit. That is the purpose of a debate. (This fact, that gets to the problem of why argumentation is correct for deductive purposes but incorrect for causal purposes).

    To publish one’s arguments in a political context, one conducts oratory, not debate. Oratory falls into the following structural categories:

    (Forms of Oratory: or ‘publication’)

    a) RHETORIC / “Rhetorical argument”: A type of argument, spoken or written, between an orator or writer and an audience, that uses reason (logos), appeals to emotion (pathos), and appeals to community norms (ethos), to persuade the listeners to take the side of the argument presented.

    b) APOLOGIA / “Apologetic Argument” / “Apologist” : A type of argument whereby an individual defends a religious, political, or cultural position or dogma through the systematic use of reason. An “Apologist” refers to authors, writers, editors or academic journals, and public leaders who commonly defend what are usually minority positions that are the subject of consistent or popular scrutiny.

    c) POLEMIC : A type of speech intended to establish the supremacy of a single point of view by refuting an opposing point of view about a matter of significant public importance in Religion, Philosophy, Politics or Science.

    d) PHILIPPIC : A type of speech that is emotive, fiery, damning, or a tirade, for the purpose of condemning, discrediting, disempowering, and ostracizing a particular political actor.

    e) JEREMIAD : A long literary work, usually in prose, but sometimes in poetry, in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and which contains a prophecy of society’s imminent downfall.

    (For more, see my guide on DISCOURSE: IRRATIONAL (expression) vs RATIONAL (debate) vs ORATORY (publication) at http://www.propertarianism.com/tools-and-techniques-for-political-debate/a-list-of-terms-for-use-in-evaluating-political-debate/#II )

    LIBERTARIANISM IS STRUCTURED RHETORICALLY, and libertarian ethics are structured as an APOLOGIA by Rothbard.

    Ratio-scientific argument from analytical philosophy, is either true or false, but it is not an appeal for consent. That is non-logical. Contract is consensual, but truth is independent of consent.

    RATIO SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENT IS ABSENT RESPECT FOR CONVENTION.

    The purpose of the scientific method is to CORRECT our sense, perception, memory, calculation, and narrative (causal relations), habits, norms, traditions, myths and metaphysical assumptions about the structure of reality. Otherwise the discipline of science would not be necessary.

    The purpose of MORAL speech in the form of RHETORIC and APOLOGIA, is to APPEAL to norms embedded in memory, and narrative, in order to obtain consent.

    The purpose of RATIO SCIENTIFIC argument is to describe a set of causal relations that produce an outcome. In other words: a formula or recipe. The formula or recipe either works or it doesn’t. But it’s not a matter of consent, or preference. It’s just true or false.

    One can say that the formula isn’t logically sufficient or solid. But one cannot prefer or object to the conclusion.

    One doesn’t write these things as appeal, one writes these as positives statements that are open to TESTING, not as appeals that are written to obtain CONSENT.

    Whether one agrees or not with them must be a matter of the argument, not wither one likes or dislikes it. Formulae and Recipes produce what they do. One can like the product or not, but the formula or recipe works, then it just does.

    I would like it very much if it was possible to convince people to adopt libertarian ethics and a libertarian morality. As it is currently structured it is not rational to think so. I am not trying to persuade people to adopt libertarianism. I am trying to demonstrate that if one desires LIBERTY, then one must ACT in such fashion that human beings will produce it. That is not a moral question. It is not a rhetorical question. It is a SCIENTIFIC QUESTION. Either people WILL or WILL NOT, when subject to incentives A, produce behavior B.

    THE ARGUMENT FOR THE STRUCTURE OF ETHICS AND MORALS

    The argument that demonstrably, we ALL act in our reproductive interests, within the structure of production, structure of reproduction, and structure of property rights which we call ‘norms’, and that ALL our discourse is little more than JUSTIFICATIONARY attempts at resisting against, cooperating with, or thieving from one another within the boundaries of those productive, reproductive, and normative constraints. That is an argument that is extremely difficult to prove.

    Nothing else is actually logical.

    If we want liberty then, we must create institutional incentives for liberty.

    Asking people to ‘believe’ in libertarianism or, marxism is equally ridiculous.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-13 13:01:00 UTC

  • ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIAN VS ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS (revised and expanded) It’s prett

    ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIAN VS ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS

    (revised and expanded)

    It’s pretty hard to beat non-aggression as an epistemic test. It’s the only intersubjectively verifiable test. We can’t really know anything else for certain. We can very easily see violence and theft.

    But, does that inability to know much else for certain, stop us from developing ETHICAL and MORAL rules?

    LETS LOOK AT ETHICS: The spectrum of Manners, Ethics and Morals.

    1) Manners are immediately visible. Just like aggression.

    2) Ethics are not immediately visible and intersubjectively verifiable. Ethical rules are principles that compensate for the asymmetry of information of both parties. Probability of adherence to ethical rules that compensate for asymmetry of information, is signaled with manners and a contractual property of ALL exchanges.

    3) Morals are not anywhere visible, but are a means of preventing privatization of the commons – involuntary transfer from others. Some are very obvious (having a child our of wedlock and then asking the community to support you), and some are less obvious (promoting a bad idea by arts, writing, speech, or performance: (most advertising).

    So, the failure to establish means of regulating ethics and morals, other than the NAP, is simply a license for unethical and moral action in any and all exchanges. Rothbard’s argument is that the market is sufficient to constrain ethical and moral behavior. But the EVIDENCE is that this isn’t true. It’s VIOLENCE that constrains it. And violence is constrained by the number of people who can be allied to either support unethical and immoral actions, or to support ethical and moral actions. The rothbardian answer to this problem is to resort to courts. But if NAP alone is the ethical and moral rule in exchanges, then, as Rothbard argues in For a New Liberty, there is no means of court resolution of fraud and immorality: theft by other than visible means.

    In other words, rothbard gives us the low trust society, and aristocracy, with a higher constraint than NAP, gives us the high trust society. Rothbard’s ethics are ‘what you can get away with in an exchange, called voluntary, but asymmetrical in knowledge.’ Aristocracy gave us ‘what you can get in a voluntary exchange under warranty that knowledge is symmetric’.

    This is why rothbardian ethics are intolerable to western christians. Demonstrably, at least our version of human beings, find that insufficient.

    Under aristocratic ethics, ALL involuntary transfer is forbidden EXCEPT that which takes place in the market for productive goods and services, fully under warrantee of symmetry of knowledge. And the further difference is, that fraud by asymmetry (omission) is not just a theft from by one party from another, but a theft from ALL PEOPLE who constantly forgo opportunities for fraud by omission – and in doing so create the HIGH TRUST SOCIETY.

    In other words, theft or violence (aggression) is an attack on all the institution of property. Property which has been paid for by constantly paying the high cost of respecting others’ monopoly of control. A control over that which they settled, made or obtained in exchange. An attack on any property then, is an attack on, and theft from all SHAREHOLDERS IN THE INSTITUTION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS. As such all men who respect property rights, as shareholders in paying for that institution, are being stolen from, and as such have standing to enforce, by violence, any offense of property rights by any person, at any time.

    In most human societies, the “OTHERS” are biological extensions of the family. In yet others, adherents to the religion. But under aristocracy the ‘in-group’ members are those who reciprocally grant and defend property rights regardless of family membership, and the “OTHERS” are those who do NOT reciprocally grant property rights, and defend them.

    THAT IS THE MEANING OF ARISTOCRACY: a shareholder in the corporation whose assets are private property rights, and the obligation and right to prosecute and demand restitution on the part of either himself OR THE CORPORATION of ALL members of the contract of private property.

    As such, the contributors to property rights in fact, are owners of the economically productive society, its norms and institutions, and those those that do not equally take responsibility for property rights are the ‘others’: non-family members.

    Under aristocratic egalitarianism, the high trust WITHIN the genetic FAMILY is extended to the CORPORATE family of fellow shareholders. Thus the family is contractual rather than genetic. that is how the ‘high trust society’ unique to northern europeans was made possible.

    The title “SIR” meant you had earned the right to carry weapons and enforce property rights. The “right to carry arms’ is identical to ‘the right to private property’. These two are ideas are inseparable. The source of property rights is the organized use of violence to create them.

    The source of property rights is not some, mystical grant of god or nature, or some necessary natural right – since private property is rare if not unique in the world, it cannot be ‘natural’. In fact, private property is UNNATURAL, which is why it is so IMPORTANT. Without it we cannot form the incentives nor perform the calculation necessary to crate a vast division of knowledge an labor in real time. Aristocracy is the system of social order where by we enter a voluntary contract to use violence to institute, and maintain, private property rights. And we struggle to enfranchise as many people in this UNNATURAL system as possible, so that we have the strength of numbers. This system, private property, is so effective, and has such an affect on status, and the ability to reproduce, that everyone wants to join the societies that have it.

    The first problem is, (a) THAT THEY WANT IT FOR FREE. And (b) once property rights are a norm, they feel it’s free, because they don’t have to EARN IT any longer with visible payments, only invisible payment (constraints). So the contract isn’t visible and is abused and taken for granted.

    As such to maintain property rights requires that we perform some ACT of maturity and COGNIZANCE in order to obtain them.

    Cities in the west were not organically created markets, but deliberate islands of PROPERTY RIGHTS crated by the organized application of violence by the nobility. The island of property rights was crafted out of a land populated by free riders who actively SUPPRESSED the desire of any individual to concentrate capital behind his ideas or wants rather than that of the free riders and rent seekers around him.

    Which is why Rothbard had to resort to CRUSOE’S ISLAND. On that island, the ocean forms the walls of the ghetto, beyond which is the aristocratic society. Crusoe’s island is one of the reasons libertarianism has failed to gain adoption. The western ethic is to “Make all men aristocrats”. That is what ‘egalitarian aristocracy’ means. That the fools in the enlightenment though men DESIRED to be aristocrats was a catastrophic error. But the fact that MANY do, is enough to form a high trust society.

    As such, NAP, is “peasant” or “ghetto”, or “gypsy trader” morality. The morality of people who cannot ally to hold land, and develop fixed capital, heavy production systems (metals) and formal institutions of dispute resolution. It not liberty, but the return to partial barbarism.

    Rothbard gave us the ethics of the traveling merchant, the ghetto, and organized crime. Aristocracy gave us the ethics of the extended family warriors, farmers and shopkeepers – the high trust society. The only people to created liberty as a formal and informal institution were aristocrats.

    Just how it is.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-13 12:49:00 UTC

  • ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIAN VS ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS (cross posted and slightly edited

    ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIAN VS ROTHBARDIAN ETHICS

    (cross posted and slightly edited)

    It’s pretty hard to beat non-aggression as an epistemic test. It’s the only intersubjectively verifiable test. We can’t really know anything else for certain. We can very easily see violence and theft.

    But, does that inability to know much else for certain, stop us from developing ETHICAL and MORAL rules?

    LETS LOOK AT ETHICS: The spectrum of Manners, Ethics and Morals.

    1) Manners are immediately visible. Just like aggression.

    2) Ethics are not immediately visible and intersubjectively verifiable. Ethical rules are principles that compensate for the asymmetry of information of both parties. Probability of adherence to ethical rules that compensate for asymmetry of information, is signaled with manners and a contractual property of ALL exchanges.

    3) Morals are not anywhere visible, but are a means of preventing privatization of the commons – involuntary transfer from others. Some are very obvious (having a child our of wedlock and then asking the community to support you), and some are less obvious (promoting a bad idea by arts, writing, speech, or performance: (most advertising).

    So, the failure to establish means of regulating ethics and morals, other than the NAP, is simply a license for unethical and moral action in any and all exchanges. Rothbard’s argument is that the market is sufficient to constrain ethical and moral behavior. But the EVIDENCE is that this isn’t true. It’s VIOLENCE that constrains it. And violence is constrained by the number of people who can be allied to either support unethical and immoral actions, or to support ethical and moral actions. The rothbardian answer to this problem is to resort to courts. But if NAP alone is the ethical and moral rule in exchanges, then, as Rothbard argues in For a New Liberty, there is no means of court resolution of fraud and immorality: theft by other than visible means.

    In other words, rothbard gives us the low trust society, and aristocracy, with a higher constraint than NAP, gives us the high trust society. Rothbard’s ethics are ‘what you can get away with in an exchange, called voluntary, but asymmetrical in knowledge.’ Aristocracy gave us ‘what you can get in a voluntary exchange under warranty that knowledge is symmetric’.

    This is why rothbardian ethics are intolerable to western christians. Demonstrably, at least our version of human beings, find that insufficient.

    Under aristocratic ethics, ALL involuntary transfer is forbidden EXCEPT that which takes place in the market for productive goods and services, fully under warrantee of symmetry of knowledge. And the further difference is, that fraud by asymmetry (omission) is not just a theft from by one party from another, but a theft from ALL PEOPLE who constantly forgo opportunities for fraud by omission – and in doing so create the HIGH TRUST SOCIETY.

    In other words, theft or violence (aggression) is an attack on all the institution of property. Property which has been paid for by constantly paying the high cost of respecting others’ monopoly of control. A control over that which they settled, made or obtained in exchange. An attack on any property then, is an attack on, and theft from all SHAREHOLDERS IN THE INSTITUTION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS. As such all men who respect property rights, as shareholders in paying for that institution, are being stolen from, and as such have standing to enforce, by violence, any offense of property rights by any person, at any time.

    In most human societies, the “OTHERS” are biological extensions of the family. In yet others, adherents to the religion. But under aristocracy the ‘in-group’ members are those who reciprocally grant and defend property rights regardless of family membership, and the “OTHERS” are those who do NOT reciprocally grant property rights, and defend them.

    THAT IS THE MEANING OF ARISTOCRACY: a shareholder in the corporation whose assets are private property rights, and the obligation and right to prosecute and demand restitution on the part of either himself OR THE CORPORATION of ALL members of the contract of private property.

    As such, the contributors to property rights in fact, are owners of the economically productive society, its norms and institutions, and those those that do not equally take responsibility for property rights are the ‘others’: non-family members.

    Under aristocratic egalitarianism, the high trust WITHIN the genetic FAMILY is extended to the CORPORATE family of fellow shareholders. Thus the family is contractual rather than genetic. that is how the ‘high trust society’ unique to northern europeans was made possible.

    The title “SIR” meant you had earned the right to carry weapons and enforce property rights. The “right to carry arms’ is identical to ‘the right to private property’. These two are ideas are inseparable. The source of property rights is the organized use of violence to create them.

    The source of property rights is not some, mystical grant of god or nature, or some necessary natural right – since private property is rare if not unique in the world, it cannot be ‘natural’. In fact, private property is UNNATURAL, which is why it is so IMPORTANT. Without it we cannot form the incentives nor perform the calculation necessary to crate a vast division of knowledge an labor in real time. Aristocracy is the system of social order where by we enter a voluntary contract to use violence to institute, and maintain, private property rights. And we struggle to enfranchise as many people in this UNNATURAL system as possible, so that we have the strength of numbers. This system, private property, is so effective, and has such an affect on status, and the ability to reproduce, that everyone wants to join the societies that have it.

    The first problem is, (a) THAT THEY WANT IT FOR FREE. And (b) once property rights are a norm, they feel it’s free, because they don’t have to EARN IT any longer with visible payments, only invisible payment (constraints). So the contract isn’t visible and is abused and taken for granted.

    As such to maintain property rights requires that we perform some ACT of maturity and COGNIZANCE in order to obtain them.

    Cities in the west were not organically created markets, but deliberate islands of PROPERTY RIGHTS crated by the organized application of violence by the nobility. The island of property rights was crafted out of a land populated by free riders who actively SUPPRESSED the desire of any individual to concentrate capital behind his ideas or wants rather than that of the free riders and rent seekers around him.

    Which is why Rothbard had to resort to CRUSOE’S ISLAND. On that island, the ocean forms the walls of the ghetto, beyond which is the aristocratic society. Crusoe’s island is one of the reasons libertarianism has failed to gain adoption. The western ethic is to “Make all men aristocrats”. That is what ‘egalitarian aristocracy’ means. That the fools in the enlightenment though men DESIRED to be aristocrats was a catastrophic error. But the fact that MANY do, is enough to form a high trust society.

    As such, NAP, is “peasant” or “ghetto”, or “gypsy trader” morality. The morality of people who cannot ally to hold land, and develop fixed capital, heavy production systems (metals) and formal institutions of dispute resolution. It not liberty, but the return to partial barbarism.

    Rothbard gave us the ethics of the traveling merchant, the ghetto, and organized crime. Aristocracy gave us the ethics of the extended family warriors, farmers and shopkeepers – the high trust society. The only people to created liberty as a formal and informal institution were aristocrats.

    Just how it is.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-13 01:49:00 UTC

  • INFINITY IS OBSCURANT LANGUAGE. 🙂 Cantor is a fraud

    INFINITY IS OBSCURANT LANGUAGE. 🙂

    Cantor is a fraud.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-11 10:10:00 UTC

  • TRUE ——————– FALSE—— Operational Language………… Moral lan

    —-TRUE ——————– FALSE——

    Operational Language………… Moral language

    Compensation……………………Shame, Moral Duty or Claim

    Voluntary Exchange…………….Involuntary Transfer

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-08 08:53:00 UTC

  • Intellectual life is a lot easier without Justification. Try it. You’ll like it.

    Intellectual life is a lot easier without Justification.

    Try it.

    You’ll like it. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-03 17:59:00 UTC

  • WE CANNOT THINK WITHOUT METAPHYSICAL BIASES Given that Don Finnegan has just hit

    WE CANNOT THINK WITHOUT METAPHYSICAL BIASES

    Given that Don Finnegan has just hit a nerve by reminding me about Friedman’s perspective on Irish Law, I’m going to throw something out here that may not be as obvious and important as it seems.

    As usual it might take me a bit to get there. But I think it’s worth the journey.

    1) MAN MUST SENSE

    2) MAN MUST PERCEIVE

    3) MAN MUST REMEMBER

    4) MAN MUST CALCULATE (PLAN)

    5) MAN MUST CHOOSE.

    6) MAN MUST ACT ON HIS CHOICE, AND HAS NOT EMPIRICALLY DEMONSTRATED HIS CHOICE UNTIL HE HAS ACTED.

    7) MAN MUST CHOOSE WITH INSUFFICIENT INFORMATION, BECAUSE OUTWITTING NATURE IS HIS ONLY CHANCE FOR PROFIT.

    It is impossible to make guesses without some basis for decision. And every civilization constructs a set of narratives that contain those metaphysical means of decision making. Those rules or guidelines, or recommendations not only make decisions possible, and rational, in the presence of insufficient informaiton, but the biases contained in those metaphysical assumptions allow us to FUND by micropayments, of all kinds, our norms. We create a reality with them. And we cooperate at the metaphysical level. (We have to.) We couldn’t think otherwise.

    The truth is that in almost no circumstance can humans make decisions as a group without shared metaphysical assumptions. Sure, without property man cannot form a division of knowledge and labor. But without metaphysical value judgements groups cannot cooperate at all.

    We have a healthy literature of cultural differences in cognition. Cultural differences in verbal and spatial intelligence, and cultural and genetic differences in the distribution of intelligence. The east and west differ between emphasis on verb and noun, on connectivity versus particularism. On constitution versus Shape.

    Most importantly, they differ ON BALANCE VERSUS TRANSFORMATION: “The purpose of man is to bend nature to his will, and to leave the world better for having lived in it”. That is the western metaphysics. Almost everything can be reduced to that statement of individual action. “Truth and debate mean the rapid resolution of differences by conflict” (See Donald Kagan); versus deception and delay until matters resolve themselves in the eastern sense (See Kissinger and Huntington.)

    And for example Jewish civilization and western civilization vary between the rebellious ethics of the bazaar and ghetto (Rothbardian ethics) and the land owning ethics and morality of the aristocratic egalitarians in the high trust society. These are metaphysical group assumptions that constitute the primary means of decision making for each group given it’s evolutionary strategy.

    LIBERTARIAN ERRORS

    For example, in the we often talk about Bouridans’ ass. The problem when you must choose between two orange vendors both offering equal oranges at equal prices. How do you choose? The only thing interesting about any exchange is this very question. Why? Because in large, any commodity is chosen not on price, or on consumption value, but on signal value, and the signal we most often pay for is contribution to our commons.

    ie: price is meaningless, since it is rarely what is purchased. We largely pay for signals and norms, and we pay for our factions and our preferences. And therefore all the Misesian and Rothbardian ordinal arguments to price are meaningless outside of commodities trading, and nothing at all to do with social order AT ALL PERIOD. In, fact, it is quite easy to case Rothbard and Mises as continuing the cultural tradition of intentionally ignoring the normative economy of land holders as a means of rebelling against it.

    When I first heard this argument from Dr Herbner, I was kind of stupefied that Misesians thought clearing preferences was ordinal predicated on price rather than a network (technically a graph) predicated largely on signals on norms, where price was merely the first marginal criteria. IN fact, the only way to argue for the ordinal versus the graph, was to argue AGAINST payment for norms, which puts Mises, Rothbard and Hayek into perspective. (And is why I criticize Mises and Rothbard. It’s why they failed.)

    IN OTHER WORDS

    WE DID NOT KONW OUR METAPHYSICS NOR WRITE IT DOWN. As such we have been largely defenseless against jewish rhetoric, and franco-germanic counter-englightenment figures, desperate to restore the church under the authority of the educational institution. Desperate to wrest control of society back into obscurant language and moral mysticism, and away from the hands of the engineers, scientists, lawyers, accountants, entrepreneurs and consumers who create and maintain the society we live in.

    Conservatives are largely right. But WE HAVE FAILED TO ARTICULATE FREEDOM AND LIBERTY in rational terms with MORAL DEPTH sufficient for they and their numbers to adopt in favor of the west.

    We can be free amongst a majority of conservatives. But we cannot be free amongst a majority of statists. The state and democracy are just communism and are antithetical to liberty, private property, common law, personal sovereignty.

    PROGRESSIVE LIBERTARIANISM IS TO LIBERTY WHAT THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL WAS TO CLASSICAL LIBERALISM.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-03 15:07:00 UTC

  • “It is better to be unjustifiably right…..than to be justifiably wrong.” -Davi

    “It is better to be unjustifiably right…..than to be justifiably wrong.”

    -David Miller

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-03 12:04:00 UTC

  • HICKS ON OUR MORAL DUTY TO IDEOLOGY OR TO REALITY (quotable) –“The Thompson-Kol

    HICKS ON OUR MORAL DUTY TO IDEOLOGY OR TO REALITY

    (quotable)

    –“The Thompson-Kolakowski conflict is an instructive example of a true-believer-apologist in conflict with an intellectually-honest thinker. While Thompson and Kolakowski were men of the Left, it’s important to note that the same psychological dichotomy runs through most intellectual movements. It’s the difference between those whose first loyalty is to a belief system and who will ignore or bend the facts to maintain their belief — and those whose first loyalty is to reality and who will alter or abandon their belief system to fit the facts.”–

    Stephen Hicks

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-03 11:51:00 UTC