“There are these highfalutin theories, but give me one that will let me build something.”
Category Archives: Thought for the Day
Thought for the Day: 26 December 2013
Read Dean Baker.
Thought for the Day: 21 December 2013
“Globalization could be used to promote competition in the CEO market so that U.S. corporations take advantage of the much lower paid CEOs in Europe and Asia to save tens of millions of dollars a year in wasted CEO pay. However because the corporate governance structure in the United States essentially allows CEOs to pick the corporate boards that decide their fate, corporations do not take advantage of this opportunity provided by globalization.”
Thought for the Day: 18 November 2013
“Continuing self-education is a personal responsibility.”
Thought for the Day: 17 October 2013
A culture of authority and obedience that supplants individual moral responsibility with loyalty to a larger mission helps loosen the moral inhibition against murder, social psychologists say. So does a routinization of violence, as well as injustice or economic hardship that allows the killer to see himself as the true victim.
– From “Behind Flurry of Killing, Potency of Hate” in the NY Times (12 Oct 2013)
Thought for the Day: 16 October 2013
“The essence of the liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.”
Thought for the Day: 9 October 2013
A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.
I’ll let you guess the speaker. A hint: He also said
A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”
Thought for the Day: 2 October 2013
The only settled way we know what the American people want is through the democratic process. [The] Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is the law of the land. A majority of the House and Senate voted for it, the President signed it into law, its constitutionality has been upheld by the Supreme Court, and a majority of Americans reelected the President after an election battle in which the Affordable Care Act was a central issue.
Moreover, we don’t repeal laws in this country by holding hostage the entire government of the United States.
(Bonus link)
Thought for the Day: 30 September 2013
The plural of “anecdote” is “bullshit”.
Thought for the Day: 21 September 2013
The word “choice” appears constantly in our advertising, almost as often as the word “new.” It’s as effective at moving products as skin or Old Glory. It strokes the country the way it likes to be stroked – with the notion that a free market means a free people.
The truth is much harder. The truth is that freedom lies not in the number of choices available to you but in the self-knowledge that comes once you have chosen. The harder the choices are, the better they define you. The real choices are the ones you make alone, far from the marketplace, with nothing but your heart and conscience.
General Motors would like you to believe that Cadillac owners are a special breed of humanity. In fact, owning a Cadillac tells you precisely nothing about your character. Decide not to own a car at all, however, and you begin to get a glimmer of what kind of person you might be… Decide anything for real and you will never forget who you are.
– Jonathan Franzen (Harper’s Magazine, Nov. 1992)