[T]here is something obscene in the attitude of those […] who are willing to condone the slaughter of defenseless victims, but march in protest against wars between the well-armed.
That a tiny number, a few hundred out of a student body of more than 27,000, was able to disrupt the campus is the consequence of more than vigor and skill in agitation. This minuscule group could not have succeeded in getting so many students into motion without three other, at times unwitting, sources of support: off-campus assistance of various kinds, the University administration, and the faculty.
Everyone who has seen the efficient, almost military organization of the agitators’ program has a reasonable basis for believing that skilled personnel and money are being dispatched into the Berkeley battle. . . . Around the Berkeley community a dozen “ad hoc committees to support” this or that element of the student revolt sprang up spontaneously, as though out of nowhere.
The course followed by the University administration . . . could hardly have better fostered a rebellious student body if it had been devised to do so. To establish dubious regulations and when they are attacked to defend them by unreasonable argument is bad enough; worse still, the University did not impose on the students any sanctions that did not finally evaporate. . . . Obedience to norms is developed when it is suitably rewarded, and when noncompliance is suitably punished. That professional educators should need to be reminded of this axiom indicates how deep the roots of the Berkeley crisis lie.
But the most important reason that the extremists won so many supporters among the students was the attitude of the faculty. Perhaps their most notorious capitulation to the F.S.M. was a resolution passed by the Academic Senate on December 8, by which the faculty notified the campus not only that they supported all of the radicals’ demands but also that, in effect, they were willing to fight for them against the Board of Regents, should that become necessary. When that resolution passed by an overwhelming majority—824 to 115 votes—it effectively silenced the anti-F.S.M. student organizations.
Soak the rich? Higher taxes imposed on the rich will not come out of their consumption expenditures, but out of their investment capital. Such taxes will mean less investment, I.E., less production, fewer jobs, higher prices.
In an emergency situation, men’s primary goal is to combat the disaster, escape the danger and restore normal conditions (to reach dry land, to put out the fire, etc.).By “normal” conditions I mean metaphysically normal, normal in the nature of things, and appropriate to human existence. Men can live on land, but not in water or in a raging fire. Since men are not omnipotent, it is metaphysically possible for unforeseeable disasters to strike them, in which case their only task is to return to those conditions under which their lives can continue. By its nature, an emergency situation is temporary; if it were to last, men would perish.
There is only one way of making progress: conjecture and criticism. And the only moral values that permit sustained progress are the objective values that the Enlightenment has begun to discover. No doubt the extraterrestrials’ morality is different from ours; but that will not be because it resembles that of the conquistadors. Nor would we be in serious danger of culture shock from contact with an advanced civilization: it will know how to educate its own children (or AIs), so it will know how to educate us – and, in particular, to teach us how to use its computers.
One of the paradoxes of our age is that politicians have never stuttered so loudly about their devotion to the public good...and never have they been so grossly indifferent to the people.
Sometimes when you hit certain [military] ranks...you're thinking about where you're going to go after that and what boards you're going to sit on and actions you can take today to set you up for the future. That's a real thing.
Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.
Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtues, not of vices.
Capitalism...holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtues, not of vices.
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote... the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities.
Please be yourself. Don't let other people tell you what your values have to be...We have this amazing ability to think for ourselves, and too few people use that ability.
Half of humans around the world think that climate change could make humans go extinct. There's zero science to support that. There's not even very much science fiction to support that.
