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Showing posts from March, 2011

Think For Yourself

Over the years, I’ve met some rather opinionated people. Some of them I actually liked. Some I thought were really brilliant and others were sadly out-of-touch. Most let their views be known with candor and humility, though some were arrogant and contentious. But what they all have in common is this: They have an opinion, it’s theirs, and they’re sticking by it. We do not need opinions to survive as individuals, but I suppose it is helpful to have them. On the other hand, as Pascal Boyer points out in his book Religion Explained (Basic Books, 2001), in addition to oxygen and nutrition, what human beings need in order to survive is “ information about the world around them” and “ cooperation with other members of the species” (120). Unfortunately, these are two “commodities” that are in rather short supply at the moment. The quantity of information is high enough, but whether it is accurate and useful is something else. And whatever cooperation there may be, it cannot be said t

Giving Up to Rule by the Few

It is disconcerting to think that the possibilities for personal freedom and well-being intended by the founders at the birth of our republic have not been realized in the way or to the extent they envisioned. Their experiment in democracy became a work-in-progress for succeeding generations, and we still haven’t quite got it right. In fact, the tenor of our partisan politics at the moment suggests we have neither the political nor the moral will to complete the task of securing “liberty and justice for all.” As citizens who are the ultimate source of sovereignty in this nation, we have given up and given in to a factionalism that pits interest-group over against interest-group, majority against minorities, class against class, in ways that for some amount to a form of socioeconomic and political tyranny. “We the people” have become “we the vested interest groups,” each of whom is more interested in gaining or consolidating advantage and acquiring or retaining control of the “sys

Manufacturing Fictions

It appears that we got what we asked for. Back in the eighteenth century, we asked for a liberal democratic government that secured and protected personal economic liberty, and that’s what we have. We wanted a government to guard everyone’s freedom to assure that minority interests and concerns would not be trammeled on by the majority. We coveted a political system that had the capacity to resolve conflicts and competing interests while maximizing freedom. We sought a government that we could form and change when it needed changing and keep when it did right by us. And now, that’s the problem. As citizens who constitute the sovereign in this country, we have subjected ourselves to our governing authorities: ourselves! We asked for it, and we got it, though at the time, we didn’t realize that competing self-interests and group interests, disparities in economic power, economic exploitation, and safeguarding the rights of social, economic, and political minorities would produce su