Politics

Question Authority. If there is an eponymous bumper sticker for my chosen culture, that's the one. Although over the years, I've come to question the dictum itself, wondering if it isn't taken to mean, more often than not, Reject Authority. Read more

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

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The Grateful Dead song, Liberty was a great favorite in the last years before Jerry's death. The chorus of

Ooo, freedom, ooo, liberty
Ooo, leave me alone
To find my own way home!

is an anthem for those of us who identified with Bobby Weir's idea of misfit power.

It always reminded me of Thoreau's little dictum,  Read more

The next topic on Haidt's list is Fairness. What's fair, what's not? Who gets how much and why? Should our life choices be determined by our level of competence? What if we are incompetent? Or, more to the point, what if we are incompetent in those things society currently values most? For which they are willing to put out the most recompense? Do those who work hardest deserve the most money?

Do we - should we - all get what's coming to us? Read more

There must be stages of caring, like there are for grieving.

Stage 1: Oh you poor thing.
Stage 2: Here, have a banana. Or would you rather have this $50.
Stage 3: I’ve got some numbers for you to call. Have you tried acupuncture?
Stage 4: (pretend you’re not home)
Stage 5: Pay me to care.

There’s been some discussion lately about the differences between Conservatives and Liberals when it comes to values such as caring. Who cares more? About what? And how? Read more

Watching Bill Moyers' interview with Jonathan Haidt last weekend, I was frustrated by the way in which both Liberals and Conservatives were being dis-served by the qualities impugned to them under each of Haidt's determinative categories: Read more

• Care
• Fairness
• Liberty
• Loyalty
• Authority
• Sanctity

That's what's going in Rocky's stocking next Christmas.

"'You cannot wave the white flag and let the environmentalists and regulators declare victory here in the heart of coal country.'
Rocky Adkins, a state representative from Kentucky, in response to a plan for one of the state's largest power plants to switch from coal to natural gas." That was the New York Times Quote of the Day, for 29 May. Read more

Catching up with the April issue of the Smithsonian, the monthly magazine of The Smithsonian Institution, I came across a story about Neal Stephenson and the project he calls Hieroglyph. Read more

A couple of days ago, I made the claim that the ancient Greek historian, Thucydides, would be able to appear on Fareed Zakaria GPS - hell, even Charlie Rose - and be right in the swing of things in no time.

Thought I would use today to give you a sampling of quotes from The History Of The Peloponnesian War :

For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller cities to subjection. Book I, 1.8
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January 2008. I'm watching Barack Obama speaking in the Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the Sunday before Martin Luther King Day. To a largely black audience, televised to an even larger audience, among whom had to be most of the black population of North America, a week before the South Carolina primary when he would need every black vote in the state. Read more