Quotulatiousness

May 8, 2017

“Have libertarians — and the broader right and/or classical-liberal movement — really lost the ‘culture wars’?”

Filed under: Business, Economics, Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:14

Nick Gillespie on the outcome of the most recent battles in the culture wars:

Spoiler alert: I think libertarians have already won the culture war in the most important ways possible. Whether it’s businesses like Whole Foods, Overstock, and Amazon; the massive and ongoing proliferation of platforms such as Netflix, YouTube, and Twitter; or gig-economy titans such as Uber and Airbnb, capitalism and entrepreneurship has been recast as an innovative, disruptive, liberatory system that allows us all to produce and consume whatever we want under increasingly personalized and individualized circumstances. What we need to do next to nail down what Matt Welch and I have dubbed The Libertarian Moment is to articulate the ways in which our society’s cultural, economic, and even political operating system has already bought into the idea that decentralization, individualism, innovation, and freedom to experiment.

If the medium is the message (all props to Marshall McLuhan) — if an operating system is more important than any specific content generated within that system — what has been abjured as “late capitalism” for decades has effectively ended all debates about how libertarian policies and mind-sets have freed us from bland top-downism in all parts of our lives. This isn’t to suggest that we are in any way living a utopian dream. It’s simply to point out that even after 15 years of drowsy economic growth and a massive expansion of state (and in many ways, corporate) power, our living standards continue to rise. Add to that huge advances in tolerance and change when it comes to racial, ethnic, and gender disparities and transformative shifts on topics as varied as drug policy, sexual orientation, criminal-justice reform, and gun rights too.

Cultural and political pessimism isn’t just a losing strategy, it’s a misimpression. Again, that’s not to say that massive problems don’t exist and need to be confronted. Will we ever see an actual federal budget again, much less that cuts government spending? U.S. foreign policy remains a shameful, disastrous, and destructive hodgepodge of hubris and stupidity. Speech and expression are under attacks from the right and the left, and the bipartisan turn against free trade and the easy movement of people across borders needs to be beaten back. As the late, great Arthur Ekirch explained in his neglected masterpiece The Decline of American Liberalism, forces of decentralization and centralization — of liberation and authoritarianism, of individualism and collectivism, of choice and coercion — have been slugging out in the United States since before there was a United States. The question is whether we are moving generally in a direction of more autonomy and less restriction on how we live our lives.

“… it’s inconceivable that a book called Fascism for Kids would ever be printed by a reputable publisher”

Filed under: Books, Education, History, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Jarrett Stepman reviews a new MIT translation of Communism for Kids:

In order to make the deadliest ideology of the 20th century palatable to young Americans, Communism for Kids is coming to a bookstore near you.

This newly released book from MIT Press “proposes a different kind of communism, one that is true to its ideals and free from authoritarianism.”

The death toll from communist regimes in the 20th century is well-documented. One study found that more people were killed under communism than homicide and genocide combined, and only 9 million more people were killed in World War I and World War II combined than under governments of this ideology.

Another study showed how the mass killings of civilians by their own governments took an immediate nosedive after the collapse of the Soviet Union and international communism.

According to the Amazon synopsis, the book weaves a fairy tale of “jealous princesses, fancy swords, displaced peasants, mean bosses, and tired workers.”

It is bewildering why MIT Press would publish a book that cutesies up the political creed that gave the world Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, and many more of the world’s most prolific mass murderers. None of these brutal dictators are mentioned in the book, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

Communism seemingly gets a pass to be reimagined as a sweet fable while it’s inconceivable that a book called Fascism for Kids would ever be printed by a reputable publisher.

[…]

This odd attempt to get kids into communism is unlikely to spawn a new generation of true believers on its own, but it does highlight the growing problem for younger Americans who are generally clueless about even recent history.

As The Daily Signal previously reported, a study from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation found that millennials in particular are stunningly ignorant about what occurred under the Soviet Union and other communist regimes just a generation ago.

One-third of millennials surveyed actually believe that more people were killed under former President George W. Bush than under Soviet dictator Stalin.

As suggested, a copy of George Orwell’s Animal Farm would be a far more accurate and informative gift than this piece of whitewash.

Spanish Civil War – Lessons NOT Learned – The British, French & US

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Military, Russia — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 28 Mar 2017

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was probably the most significant war between the First and the Second World War. [M]any important lessons were learned and NOT learned by the British, French, US, German, Italian and Soviet Forces.

Military History Visualized provides a series of short narrative and visual presentations like documentaries based on academic literature or sometimes primary sources. Videos are intended as introduction to military history, but also contain a lot of details for history buffs. Since the aim is to keep the episodes short and comprehensive some details are often cut.

QotD: The hidden power of language

Filed under: Quotations, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I believe, but don’t know how to prove, a much stronger version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis than is currently fashionable. That is, I believe the way humans think is shaped in important ways by the linguistic categories they have available; thinking outside those categories is possible but more difficult, has higher friction costs. Accordingly, I believe that some derivation of Alfred Korzybski’s discipline of General Semantics will eventually emerge as an essential tool of the first mature human civilizations.

Eric S. Raymond, “What Do You Believe That You Cannot Prove?”, Armed and Dangerous, 2005-01-06.

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