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Jason Jewell
ParticipantHere’s an essay Anthony Gregory wrote on this subject a few years ago: http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory92.html
ParticipantMark, that’s definitely a gap in the lecture series. As I’m sure you noticed, by the end of the course I was running out of lecture slots, but I still had many topics to try to cover. Decolonization didn’t make the cut, in large part because my knowledge of the topic is pretty superficial, although I have done survey-type lectures on it in the past.
If I ever do a “second edition” of this course, this an area I’d want to explore more because so much of the demand for global wealth redistribution today rests on assumptions about colonialism and presumed handicapping of the former colonies at the time of their independence.
Unfortunately, I don’t even know of a reliable book recommendation off the top of my head. I’ll do a little digging and see what I can come up with.
ParticipantJust to clarify, my comments above assumed that a modern selection by lottery would include not only offices currently elected by ballot, but also offices now occupied by career “civil servants.”
ParticipantThe concept of citizenship is important to keep in mind when this practice comes up. Only a small minority of Athenians had citizenship even when the democracy was at its height in the 5th century, so the pool of potential officeholders was much more narrow than it would be today if something similar were tried.
You may recall that Andrew Jackson thought that any citizen should be able to perform the duties of public office and that a lottery system was legitimate in his view. Before the 20th century most offices required no specialized knowledge on the part of the officeholder.
I’m not sure whether a lottery system would put the brakes on the growth of the State. It could prevent the creation of a separate class of people who view the State as the way to wealth; that would certainly be helpful.
November 9, 2012 at 4:23 pm in reply to: 2012 Elections in Light of Rise & Fall of Civilizations #16474ParticipantI’m glad you’re finding the lectures worthwhile. If you are interested in connecting what’s happening now to the idea of civilizations’ “life cycles,” you’d probably enjoy Jacques Barzun’s “From Dawn to Decadence”: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060928832/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0060928832&linkCode=as2&tag=thewesttrad-20
ParticipantThis is not an area that I have studied too closely. Obviously there was not an abrupt shift; Arab and Viking raiding continued well past 1000 AD in various places. In the case of the Vikings, I think the record is fairly clear that they eventually got more out of settling in Normandy, Britain, Ireland, etc., and trading from there than they did from the earlier raids, and they adjusted their behavior accordingly. I know less about the Arab side of things, but perhaps someone else in the forums has studied this question.
ParticipantPer Logic 101, your friend’s failure to live as though there were no right or wrong doesn’t disprove his assertion by itself (if we argued that, we’d be committing the tu quoque fallacy). But I would think raising this point might at least get him to reconsider his position.
Regarding JohnD’s comment above, a number of authors have pointed out the curious fact that all human societies throughout history have recognized certain things as right or wrong. In the West the notion of natural law is (in part) built on this observation. C.S. Lewis famously referred to this body of shared morality across cultures as the Tao in his book The Abolition of Man.
ParticipantI wonder if your acquaintance lives his life as though there were no right and wrong, only perceptions. I suspect he doesn’t.
ParticipantAsk the pro-centralization person if he favors looking to the United Nations to rectify abuses perpetrated by the U.S. government. The principle is the same.
Historically, the ultimate way to free yourself from an oppressive jurisdiction is physically to leave it. Jurisdictions that are too oppressive face competition from nearby ones that give their inhabitants fewer problems. The implication of this reality is that a plethora of small jurisdictions is better for liberty than a handful of big ones.
This is a good piece dealing (in part) with the issue you have raised: http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block48.html
Participant“For those who think abortion is wrong, would it also be wrong to initiate force against those who are trying to have an abortion?”
The tricky thing here is that if abortion is murder, forcibly stopping someone from having an abortion is not an initiation of force, any more so than intervening with force to stop a violent assault or a “normal” homicide is.
ParticipantI don’t believe there’s any evidence that there was substantive support from the Founders for federal involvement in education or the arts. The one possible exception would be support for military academies. Certainly the burden of proof should be on the advocates of such programs to show that the Constitution authorizes them.
ParticipantRecommended reading on this question: http://lewrockwell.com/vance/vance292.html
Participant“Consider a man and a woman each with a productivity of $10 per hour, and suppose, because of discrimination or whatever, that the man is paid $10 per hour and the woman is paid $8 per hour. It is as if the woman had a little sign on her forehead saying, “Hire me and earn an extra $2 an hour.”
This makes her a desirable employee even for a sexist boss. But when an equal-pay law stipulates that she must be paid the same as the man, the employer can indulge his discriminatory tendencies and not hire her at all — at no cost to himself.”
Walter Block has several pieces that address this sort of thing. Search mises.org for his articles and videos on affirmative action; the logic is the same as for equal-pay legislation.
ParticipantI have not seen “2016,” so I’ll defer to SmartMuffin’s description. In common usage it seems that “anti-colonial” and “anti-Western” are practically synonymous. It’s implied that because of the history of colonialism/imperialism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Western countries have an ongoing moral responsibility to sacrifice their interests to benefit non-Western countries, in large part through a redistribution of wealth (foreign aid, debt forgiveness, etc.).
ParticipantSmartMuffin, Wikipedia has some introductory-level info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice#Europe
When you read the ancient and early medieval historians, you frequently come across references to the practice, and the tone usually suggests it was nothing out of the ordinary.
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