Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Thursday, October 15th, 2026
As noted previously
[I]n sociological theories institutions are generally reckoned to be significant features of a society, and there seems to be some primitive notion that underlies the use of the term, but as is often the case the precise definitions offered cover a range of related possibilities. The Stanford Encyclopedia ...
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Friday, October 9th, 2026
Reading Gross & Levitt, Higher Superstition, concerning ‘The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science.’
Science is one of the characteristics and triumphs of the West, so it is an irresistible target for those who find the moral burden of their own civilisation unbearable. Science is therefore attacked as being ...
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Saturday, August 22nd, 2026
A discussion with a group of friends turned – never mind how – to the subject of same-sex marriage (SSM.) I made the traditionalist claim that marriage is an institution whose purpose and function is to regulate sexual behaviour, to provide support for children and child-bearing women, and to support ...
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Friday, July 10th, 2026
1
In discussion, we have wondered about the lunacies that are afflicting us, and I have been asked what I make of them. I begin by noting that the nonsense we observe is characterized by its uniformly destructive nature. I have previously noted that in order to determine whether the agents ...
Posted in History, Politics, Sociology | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 9th, 2026
It has no foundational texts
We were discussing the origins of the multiculturalist ideology and the idea that ‘Diversity is Our Strength.’ (I shall call this the MCD Complex - MCDC.) I pointed out that although Liberalism could point back to JS Mill and any number of other philosophers, and Socialists ...
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Wednesday, July 8th, 2026
Does the Analysis of Populism Rest on a Mistake?
Scholars who are struggling to come up with a coherent and plausible characterization of populism may be approaching the problem from the wrong direction. They seem to have assumed that there is a thing that ‘populism’ describes and that all uses of ...
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Sunday, July 5th, 2026
Almost all mainstream political programs have ultimately aimed at (or at least have been justified in terms of) improving the lot of humankind. In this respect you might call them Eudaimonist. Socialists think that humans will flourish better with equality maximised, liberals think the same for maximising liberty, and so ...
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Sunday, June 28th, 2026
What are these ‘indigenous ways of knowing’ (henceforth, IWK)? Let’s ignore the term ‘indigenous’ for the moment: we will see that it has its own problems. An unsystematic review of many of the official and semi-official resources available online is extremely confusing, since there seems to be no consistent distinction ...
Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Sociology | No Comments »
Thursday, June 25th, 2026
Extract from the Brookings Report 182-4
The implications of a discovery of extraterrestrial life
Recent publicity given to efforts to detect extraterrestrial messages via radio telescope has popularized -- and legitimized -- speculations about the impact of such a discovery on human values. [33] It is conceivable that there is semi-intelligent ...
Posted in Interstellar, Politics | No Comments »
Thursday, October 14th, 2021
I, me, my
Please keep up.
Posted in Politics | No Comments »