It leads directly to our current narcissistic condition: devoid of standards, repudiating all value and especially communal values, and utterly alien to virtue.
Clearly any project organized on such principles is doomed to failure. Its internal contradictions damn it. The polity that calls …
It leads directly to our current narcissistic condition: devoid of standards, repudiating all value and especially communal values, and utterly alien to virtue.
Clearly any project organized on such principles is doomed to failure. Its internal contradictions damn it. The polity that calls itself "The United States of America" (a fraud; it is the successor state to the original) is untenable and will not last this century. That is certain. The only question is: what will replace it?
Hey Jonah, some random thoughts on the way to work…
I largely agree with you, sir. But a counterpoint for your consideration—
It was pursuit of happiness that invented fracking, the microchip, and the MRI machine—the latter of which, “selfish” biotech funds aside, has helped save my son in his illness. It was an ethos of bringing to as many people as possible what one loved to make, from the smallest entrepreneur to the so-called robber barons like Carnegie who underwrote thriving art scenes in New York.
So “Whatever you damn well please” may sound to you like an ethos of selfishness, but the founders called it something else: “interest” as in what they had an interest in, skin in the game if you will. But for them it had to be done with community in mind otherwise, beware; unfettered capitalism dumped chemicals into the Ohio river and gave rise to evil bureaucracies such as the EPA.
But you’re right in that the enlightenment project making its measurement science and of humanism was doomed to failure. Had the French listened to Pascal instead of Decartes, they might not have slaughtered so many a century later.
In contrast, what made the American experiment unique was that it welded that enlightenment with individuals and communities who were free to sell or organize or be charitable — many times with a foundation of religion or at least an inspired secularism such as one sees in the rotary clubs and the Boy Scouts.
Yes, we face huge problems and many of those are due to the moral cul de sac of selfishness. But not all of them.
One way out of the wilderness is to pose an ethos of “interest” married to responsibility and the rule of law and I daresay a return to a healthy form of public shame.
And I guess that brings me back to what I agree with about your point. Our nation can’t survive on the enlightenment alone. It’s too narrow in its understanding of man. Unfortunately, in a pluralistic community like ours one can’t enforce such things.
"Anything we damned well please" is very telling.
It leads directly to our current narcissistic condition: devoid of standards, repudiating all value and especially communal values, and utterly alien to virtue.
Clearly any project organized on such principles is doomed to failure. Its internal contradictions damn it. The polity that calls itself "The United States of America" (a fraud; it is the successor state to the original) is untenable and will not last this century. That is certain. The only question is: what will replace it?
It's a PJ O'Rourke quote, not an excerpt from the constitution. It points to nothing more than one man's irreverent wit.
when did the whale let you out
lol...this made me smile! thanks!
Hey Jonah, some random thoughts on the way to work…
I largely agree with you, sir. But a counterpoint for your consideration—
It was pursuit of happiness that invented fracking, the microchip, and the MRI machine—the latter of which, “selfish” biotech funds aside, has helped save my son in his illness. It was an ethos of bringing to as many people as possible what one loved to make, from the smallest entrepreneur to the so-called robber barons like Carnegie who underwrote thriving art scenes in New York.
So “Whatever you damn well please” may sound to you like an ethos of selfishness, but the founders called it something else: “interest” as in what they had an interest in, skin in the game if you will. But for them it had to be done with community in mind otherwise, beware; unfettered capitalism dumped chemicals into the Ohio river and gave rise to evil bureaucracies such as the EPA.
But you’re right in that the enlightenment project making its measurement science and of humanism was doomed to failure. Had the French listened to Pascal instead of Decartes, they might not have slaughtered so many a century later.
In contrast, what made the American experiment unique was that it welded that enlightenment with individuals and communities who were free to sell or organize or be charitable — many times with a foundation of religion or at least an inspired secularism such as one sees in the rotary clubs and the Boy Scouts.
Yes, we face huge problems and many of those are due to the moral cul de sac of selfishness. But not all of them.
One way out of the wilderness is to pose an ethos of “interest” married to responsibility and the rule of law and I daresay a return to a healthy form of public shame.
And I guess that brings me back to what I agree with about your point. Our nation can’t survive on the enlightenment alone. It’s too narrow in its understanding of man. Unfortunately, in a pluralistic community like ours one can’t enforce such things.
Thanks for the dialogue!
He’s a transparent troll on collectivism.