After debating today with my pastor whether what the world needs is more or less government intervention in the cooperative actions of individuals (ie, the economy), I rediscovered the following from De Tocqueville (1835/1840). The passage paints his vision of a future democratic society, indicating how he foresaw people might […]
Read MorePost Tagged with: "Morality"
Moral Markets and Honest Money
Revised and updated: reconciling our conflicting views of the market through consistent principle and morality. A Christian friend is an avowed socialist and another associate is determinedly left wing. I asked them recently what socialism meant to them. The answer was essentially “people being good to one another”: kindness, compassion, […]
Read MoreInflation’s Moral Hazard by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal Summer 2009
But asset inflation—ultimately, the debasement of the currency—as the principal source of wealth corrodes the character of people. It not only undermines the traditional bourgeois virtues but makes them ridiculous and even reverses them. Prudence becomes imprudence, thrift becomes improvidence, sobriety becomes mean-spiritedness, modesty becomes lack of ambition, self-control becomes […]
Read MoreChild stabbings almost double in five years – Telegraph
Via Child stabbings almost double in five years – Telegraph: Youngsters aged under 18 needing hospital treatment for wounds from a knife or sharp object have leapt up by 83 per cent since 2003, NHS figures show. There has also been a sharp rise in the number of children needing […]
Read MoreCCF Seminar: knife and gun crime
Updated Tonight, I heard some remarkable and shocking accounts of knife and gun crime in Britain and what is to be done about it. I’ll not repeat the accounts of the crimes themselves: some are too grotesque to publish here. And that is part of the problem. Some young people […]
Read MoreAtlas Shrugged
Yesterday, I finished Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, a book which seems to be enjoying a fashionable resurgence. Atlas Shrugged is, from the jacket: The astounding story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world — and did. … It is a mystery story, not […]
Read MoreThe Abolition of Man
C S Lewis’ book The Abolition of Man is presented as three lectures examining the ultimate outcome of a philosophy which seeks to abandon the Tao: the body of natural law. In his first lecture, Lewis illustrates the trend of his time to disregard values and emotions: to dismiss them, […]
Read MoreWe’re in danger of entering a new Dark Age – Telegraph
As I was saying to Beth only the other day after reading Roche*: Distracted by celebrity, softened up by the education system, we have also succumbed to what you could call intellectual relativism. We have reached a state of affairs whereby people believe that the validity of their views is […]
Read MoreRational Self-Interest — Ayn Rand Lexicon
In exploring Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, I found this: When one speaks of man’s right to exist for his own sake, for his own rational self-interest, most people assume automatically that this means his right to sacrifice others. Such an assumption is a confession of their own belief that to injure, […]
Read MoreRight, wrong and education
Consider these news stories: Pupils will no longer have to be taught the difference between “right and wrong” under draft plans put forward by England’s exams regulator. via BBC NEWS | Education | ‘Right and wrong’ lessons to end. Parents should avoid telling their children what is “right and wrong” […]
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