What’s Next For Cuba?

Some ideas here, at Law At The End Of The Day, from someone with roots.

China?  Brazil? 

Addition: More here.

Eric Hobsbawm On Life In The Weimar Republic: 1931-1933

Hobsbawm spent two years as a boy in the short-lived Weimar Republic and watched as the Nazis came to power.  

There’s this:

“The fact is that no one, right, left or centre, got the true measure of Hitler’s National Socialism, a movement of a kind that had not been seen before and whose aims were rationally unimaginable.”

and also this:

Even its few years of ‘normality’ rested on the temporary quiescence of a volcano that could have erupted at any time. The great man of the theatre, Max Reinhardt, knew this. ‘What I love,’ he said, ‘is the taste of transience on the tongue – every year might be the last.’ It gave Weimar culture a unique tang. It sharpened a bitter creativity, a contempt for the present, an intelligence unrestricted by convention, until the sudden and irrevocable death. 

Interesting observations from someone who was there.  Maybe no one could put it back together again?

Related Posts: The Kant-Fichte Argument, Law At The End Of The Day, The Kant-Fichte Argument

The Becker-Posner Blog, Free Speech in American Universities

Here is the link.  Interesting post.

Briefly, here are some of the reasons discussed as to why parts of our universities may be further left than much of the general population:

1.  A lack of understanding of the often counter-intuitive principles of economics and open markets; that two parties in a trade can benefit despite pursuing mutual self-interest, for example.   A whole body of thinking exists that contributes to the success of our society of which some in our universities remain ignorant.

2.  After Joseph Schumpeter, intellectuals who do not take part in business tend to believe that a socialist-communist sytem would allow them to be more influential, and so often have a deep need to embrace such ideas, (or find themselves in departments where such ideas are embraced.)

3.  A certain idealogical hostility toward capitalism that can’t really embrace socialism (because of its dismal record) but also can’t criticize “capitalism” head-on moves instead to criticize private systems’ treatment of any oppressed class.

Universities seen through an economic and legal analyisis, at least….

…though, to me,  the argument that free speech is ultimately threatened by the push to make freedom absolute is nothing new.   Sooner of later such thinking is going to have a wider impact, and consequences. 

Take the Day Off…Have Sex…Make Babies….Win a Prize

Do it for Mother Russia, Comrade, rest assured we’re capitialists now. 

Here’s the link from Drudge.

Don’t forget you can have sex in a tent for Mother Russia too. 

Valuable insights into Russian society and transition?….or just a few fluff pieces confirming what we already think we know.

The Chinese Military

The Chinese military celebrates it’s 80th birthday.

Things to worry about:  All the extra boys and men in China.  All the poor, often jobless men in and around China’s cities.  The Japanese, Chinese, North and South Koreans, Tawainese etc… don’t get along that well.  The U.S. and China have eyes on the same resources

Things to be happy about:  If we try and get along with the Chinese, it might just work.  They’re young, our economies are intertwined…ahem.  They’re pragmatic.  They’re shrewd.  They like classical music and science.  We have a lot more in common than we think.

Have sex on a cot for Mother Russia!

Of course, this article is in the Daily Mail, and Britain and Russia are having a little fight right now, so it’s ridiculously loaded.

But haven’t I seen those convulsing bodies, vacant stares, and happy smiles somewhere?

Let’s see… here and here…here…   Sex and death and religious ecstasy.

At least in America, you’d probably have to go your car to have sex. 

The Seedy Global Warming Underbelly

Frankly, there are many, many people who have political and idealogical interests in global warming being “true” enough to become policy.

In my opinion, many see victory in political terms, even if there are very good arguments and certainly much scientific debate going on around them that suggest otherwise. I count myself lucky to be part of a majority that is skeptical of global warming arguments, but I’m concerned that there’s now enough political will to allow restrictions on the way we all live according to some pretty bad ideas.

Global warming is in some sense happening, I believe, and many scientists think so, but some drivers of global warming have other interests:

The “Anti” people-Some environmentalism has its roots in Marxism, Communism, and other anti-capitalist idealogies. Anti-technology, anti-corporation, anti-animal testing folks can all find a common expresssion of what they are against within the idea of environmentalism, and global warming is their vehicle.

A deeper question-I think some of environmentalism has its roots in an old philosophical debate, about how one thinks about nature. This could, in part, be traced back to Rousseau. How self-interested are we? But I also think it explains why some people who love literature, poetry, music, etc….some people at NPR, for example, don’t utilize reason and analysis enough to resist hopping on the global warming express, though they seem to be doing a decent job.

So, what to do?

Although I posted this quote before, I’ll let it do the talking for me:

“…a light broke upon all natural philosophers. They learned that reason only perceives that which it produces after its own design; that it must not be content to follow, as it were, in the leading-strings of nature, but must proceed in advance with principles of judgement according to unvarying laws, and compel nature to reply its questions.”

Immanuel Kant-Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason

Welcome, Comrade! Have you heard about the revolution?

Last weekend, I stopped by my local communist bookstore. Yes, some people are still waiting for the revolution. Workers of the World Unite!

I don’t want to merely criticize this particular bookstore, because that would really be too easy, and too predictable. I decided to walk in with an open mind. It was a small bookstore with about a 1,000 or so titles. I learned that no one is paid to work the counter, they’re volunteers. The collection ranged from diehard communism to the book I bought: Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.

In their favor:

1. They knew the titles well, and were happy to talk about pretty much anything.
2. Hugo Chavez has had some success in creating social programs in his own dictatorial, latin strong-man kind of way.

While buying it, however, they kept pushing leaflets and other propoganda into my hands and into the bag. This was clearly “go” time for building the revolution, and as we talked it became more clear this was what they had been waiting for. They made it tough to leave, and as I left, I walked around the corner to the garbage, and threw everything but Hawking’s book away.

I’ll let Karl Popper have the last word here:

“…and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society. It took some time before I recognized this as no more than a beautiful dream; that freedom is more important that equality; that the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom; and that, if freedom is lost, there will not even be equality among the unfree.”