Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Random Observations
To ask the perpetually moot question; if humans are “basically” good or evil, is like asking if rainbows are basically red or blue.
A Marxist intellectual will seldom acknowledge that fascism is merely a variant of their own statist/collectivist philosophy (Mussolini was a devout Marxist throughout his career as the first fascist dictator and, like Hitler, despised free-market capitalism).
A free person saying, "maybe they don't want to be free" is like a rich person saying, "maybe they don't want to be rich" – it's a stupid statement in both cases. Likewise it demonstrates a complete lack of awareness regarding the circumstance of post-war Germany and Japan where both countries' citizens eventually seemed okay with the freedom idea (well, okay, at least this has been the case in Japan).
"You can't force someone to be free" is like saying you can't "force" a victim of abuse to be freed of abuse – yes you can(!), in both cases (and it's the right thing to do).
When a person is discussing their circumstances or values and uses the word, "We," he or she is most likely talking about themself while assuming they are qualified to speak for everyone else.
Intellectual scholarship virtually never trumps common sense.
One could never accuse Neville Chamberlain or Jimmy Carter of being a "war monger," but one could accuse them both of being just plain stupid.
Simply saying one is “for the underdog” is meaningless when one is the overdog and merely wants a punitive government to attack people richer than ones’ self.
The pen is mightier than the sword,...but the sword really hurts.
Some of the most ruthless and cruel extremists of history had gained their power partially through articulated bogus platitudes to moral virtue.
There is no law or indication that a person merely expressing a belief in "sharing," altruism, or moral goodness actually embodies any such principals. In fact, there is good reason to believe that the degree of passion in which one speaks for such values is inversely proportional to the actual degree of goodness the speaker embodies.
If I lived in a country where the state commanded all aspects of my life and where people were regularly arrested and punished for merely holding viewpoints that differed with those of the government, I would really be pissed off to hear of some free and well-off people saying "some people don't want to be free" or "we can't make them free."
