Come On Sense

I just read in this morning’s paper that the approval rating for Congress is now down to 9%.  Here’s an idea that just might bring the whole country together again. Warren Buffett, in a recent  interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling: Continue reading “Warren Buffet’s Way to Fix the Deficit” »

Chapter One
The Victory of Hegel over Locke

Locke

Thanks mostly to the inadequacies of the American educational system, few American citizens know much about John Locke. He was born in August of 1632 and rose to become one of the most influential of the Enlightenment thinkers. Locke’s contribution to the founding of the American Republic is hard to overstate. His writings on liberty and the social contract still stand as beacons to human potential and the sovereignty of the individual over the state.  Locke had a major influence on the thinking of the founding fathers of the American Republic. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson all drew heavily on Locke in their writings and vision for the new country. Jefferson borrowed the phrase ‘long train of abuses’ from Locke’s Second Treatise. He said that “Bacon, Locke and Newton … I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical and Moral sciences” Continue reading “Chapter One – The Victory of Hegel over Locke” »

Here is a brief peek at the upcoming book The Death of the American Dream. The entire book will be available by the end of November 2011. If you want to receive a free e-copy, CLICK HERE – and register. I will send out your copy as soon as the editors are finished with it.

Foreword

This has been a hard book to write. I expect that it will be a hard one to read. My own life  journey began during the last years of the Second World War. I came of age during the sixties – that time of optimism and the flourishing of freedom with the United States. Like most who came of age during that period, I now look back wistfully at a time when the population – lead by liberated youth – stood against government corruption and overtly criminal behavior. For a brief moment the forces that would dismantle the government and society that the founders gave us were held back. Continue reading “The Death of the American Dream – Foreword” »

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but “to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER,” and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

Thomas Paine, The American Crisis

It is well to remember these words. Once they were applied to a foreign power. Now they may be accurately used to describe the American government. The price of liberty is vigilance against the government that would enslave the people who have brought it into existence.

The great question is almost completely answered. Lincoln put it well in the Gettysburg address. Whether “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” For Lincoln the issue was the preservation of the Union and a system of government that allowed a people to define not only how they would be governed but who would be charged with managing that governance. But there was an assumption at the core of the address – indeed at the core of the thinking at the time – that government so styled would endure in one form or another. If you take the question of preservation of the Union out of the mix, the issue becomes who is going to manage the governance of the two factions – north and south. Lincoln knew that the north and the south, if succession succeeded, would organize along similar governmental lines. But the core of Lincoln’s question remains and today , I fear, generates a melancholy answer. Continue reading “The Failure of Self-Government” »

I was having drinks with a couple of friends last evening. Both of them are involved in activism. One from the right and the other from the left. As the evening wore on, the conversation turned to the relationship between individuals and the mass organizations that constitute the ‘social order’. Afterwards, I got to thinking about what we discussed. Continue reading “Domesticated?” »

Have you ever stopped to wonder about your life – where it might have taken you if you had made certain decisions rather than the ones you made? I think that is a very human tendency that comes more frequently with advancing age. It is normal for us to look back over the years in search of those moments that presented us with choices. Continue reading “The Problem with Science Fiction” »

Those of us in the baby boomer generations remember, and have experienced, something that later generations will apparently not. When I came of age, the American was the toughest and most demanding customer on the planet. If you wanted to sell anything – with the exception of an occasional whimsical doodad like a pet rock – to these people, you had to meet a three pronged test. Continue reading “The Death of the American Customer” »

The great American contribution of human development was pluralism. Mostly out of necessity, the early colonists developed the idea that Americans were first and foremost Americans and then, only secondarily, something else. Unlike other parts of the world. we developed the idea of Italian Americans, Japanese Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Polish Americans and a whole range of others. No matter what the ethnic origins, the root of each description was American. Continue reading “The Natural Implications of Tribalism” »