kulthur -- All Comments -- In These Times

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kulthur

- 26 May 07
- 3:53 pm
Wolf is absolutely correct: that is not "fairness," that is "resentment." This, of course, is exactly the conflation that allows socialism to continue to masquerade among the muddle-headed, but resentful, as a morally superior doctrine. Wrong: it is simply the political doctrine that enshrines resentment as its animating force, but calls it fairness. That's it. And HA - "Gracchus." Gracchus was a manipulative bastard who sought to make himself the champion of suddenly enfranchised masses, who, in Rome's client system, would back Him, who would thereby become the most powerful political figure in the Republic, a single-handed counterweight to the Senate …

Posted to Who's Afraid of Democracy?
- 26 May 07
- 8:59 pm
Word. It isn't difficult to sympathize with the revulsion inspired by massive wealth, or the terrible struggle many people endure merely to maintain for themselves an unenviable existence, but frankly that does not mean there is a duty to redistribute wealth from one to the other. Since Aristotle this has been an ambiguous principle at best, and has always arisen from a close consideration of actual circumstances and a communal "happiness" that has required a kind of Procrustean enforcement proportionally increasing with the number and complexity of a population. This has the same ontological status as the mere fact of random …

Posted to Who's Afraid of Democracy?
- 02 Jun 07
- 1:49 pm
Egalitarianism is not resentment? The problem with socialists is they'll never be good economists because they subscribe to the uber-ideology, and therefore can never become good psychologists. Don't you people ever read your Nietszche? Of course it's resentment. Inegalitarianism will Always Reign, and never has it Not reigned. To quote Stendhal, inventing a citation from Machiavelli, "is it my fault if that's the way things are?" I'm actually not a libertarian; economics is only part of the picture. Capitalism is what happens when no one makes rules - that's all. Of course it gets codified, but it gets codified In Law, …

Posted to Who's Afraid of Democracy?