Quote of the day

[rgraham666]

The original is lost somewhere in the archives. So I'm restarting it.

Just read this one and I love it.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. - John Kenneth Galbraith

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

The original is lost somewhere in the archives. So I'm restarting it.

Just read this one and I love it.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. - John Kenneth Galbraith

It's a shame, if they were looking for a biological rather than moral reason, they could have just picked up "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.

 

[rgraham666]

It's a shame, if they were looking for a biological rather than moral reason, they could have just picked up "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.

Shhh! Don't give 'em any ideas.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

"There's no such thing as a free lunch."

Milton Friedman

 

[SeaCat]

"There's no such thing as a free lunch."

Milton Friedman

T.A.N.S.T.A.A.F.L.

R. H. Heinlein

Cat

 

[cloudy]

"Native American: now there's an oxymoron for you." ~ Sherman Alexie

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. - John Kenneth Galbraith

Aside from it's sneering, cynical and false insinuation, this quote suggests a profoundly flawed view of human motivation and action. Human beings pursue their own self interest, period. We can hope that they view their self interest in broad terms, and teach and encourage them to do so. Many people adopt foolish or destructive interpretations of where their self interest lies.

But pursuing self interest is intrinsic to our nature as human beings, and to seek "justification" or "condemnation" for it makes no more sense that seeking to justify or condemn rocks for just sitting there. Ignoring this fact about the nature of humans when devising economic or political systems will always end in tears, if not in oceans of blood.


Edited to add:

Ami and the wing of the Objectivist movement he associates with does something that I disagree with, which is to characterize the motives of Objectivism's opponent's as evil. I think that it is not only more civil but more accurate to accord my own ideological opponents the presumption of good will; to presume that like me they hold the views they do because they sincerely think that their ideas provide the most fruitful means to improve the lives of all people.

This Galbraith quote is the exact mirror image of the thing that Ami does that I disagree with.


PS. He says "conservative," but you can be damned sure that he's really talking about libertarians like me, and like Milton Friedman.

I wonder what "selfish" interest Milton Friedman was pursuing when he spent the last 10 years of his life trying to free inner city children from the cesspools they call "public schools" in those places.

PPS. Those who find it so easy to sneer at and attribute bad motives to libertarians and certain kinds of conservatives should read Charles Murray's "Why I am a Libertarian" and Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France." BTW, our beloved Colleen Thomas was a Burkeian conservative.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

T.A.N.S.T.A.A.F.L.

R. H. Heinlein

Cat

Well, I didn't exactly say Milton invented it. I'm not sure Heinlein did, either. I'd give them equal credit for popularizing it, and Milton died yesterday, so he gets the limelight today.

 

[rgraham666]

Terrorism is violence of the weak, and we denigrate it. Warfare is violence of the strong and we exalt it.

Can't remember who said this.

 

[Misty_Morning]

"Those who aspire not to guess and devine, but to discover and know, who propose not to devise mimic and fabulous worlds of their own, but to examine and dissect the nature of this very world itself, must go to the facts for themselves for everything." Sir Francis Bacon, 1620

 

[kendo1]

Men must be born and reborn to belong. Their bodies must be made of the dust of their forefather's bones.
Luther Standing Bear

Question for Cloudy.
Are people of the First Nation/ Redskins/ American Indians/ Amerindians bothered by these labels?
(I know Cloudy isn't bothered by what I call her, otherwise I would be polite to her- but I do recognise her background and make reference to it, as I respect her.)

Here in sunny Scotland we are Scottish. Doesn't matter what race/creed we are, not that anyone would notice anyway. I was talking to an asian shopkeeper today. He was looking forward to the Scottish/ Oz rugby match on Saturday. He is of asian parents, but is fiercely Scottish- proud to be a Scot.
My point is, I would label him as an asian Scot if I was describing him to someone else, a Scot if I was talking about his nationality or his support for the rugby team.

Am I making any sense?

Ken

 

[kendo1]

Big bump cos Cloudy's about.

 

[rgraham666]

Charley's thread bought this quote to mind. From the fire storm of Hamburg.

"The wind made a sound like the devil laughing."

Brrr.

 

[Misty_Morning]

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." - Albert Einstein

 

[rgraham666]

Management is about persuading people to do things they don't want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could do. - Steve Jobs.

 

[rgraham666]

In order to be successful in the future a company must be systematically open to heresy.

A line I saw in Wired magazine many years ago.

 

[Harry Leg]

Happiness is no laughing matter

 

[3113]

Shhh! Don't give 'em any ideas.

No worry there. Admit that there's a "selfish gene" and you end up admitting that genetics has something to do with how we are, and that leads to all sorts of trouble. I mean, next you'll be saying that gay people are born that way and can't be changed

Don't you know it's all lifestyle? Unless you have a perscription drug or alchohol problem.

 

[rgraham666]

It doesn't matter, 3113. If one reason to be hateful and arrogant fails, the haters and the arrogant will find another one.

We humans are flexible like that.

It's in our genes.

 

[Goldie Munro]

'Do they have MacDonalds in Scotland?' Non aware English student to Scottish teacher.

 

[Equinoxe]

"Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?"

- Diogenes of Sinope​

 

[Harry Leg]

Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
~Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

 

[Misty_Morning]

"Nothing is so simple that it cannot be misunderstood." - Teague's Paradox

 

[Tempest_Soul]

"If we are all but actors and the whole world a stage, then one should ask, am I the star and when is my death scene?" Tempest_Soul

 

[SimonBrooke]

Here in sunny Scotland we are Scottish. Doesn't matter what race/creed we are, not that anyone would notice anyway. I was talking to an asian shopkeeper today. He was looking forward to the Scottish/ Oz rugby match on Saturday. He is of asian parents, but is fiercely Scottish- proud to be a Scot.

Here in sunny Scotland, though, we live in a nation which reinvented itself in the cauldron of the Wars of Independence. Prior to the the end of the thirteenth century, 'Scot' described only one of the ethnic groups in Scotland - to be precise, Clan Campbell (and a few other clans - the MacNeils, MacDonalds and MacLeods, for certain, but mainly Clan Cambell). Malcolm 1V used to address his charters to '...omnibus hominibus tocius terre sue Francis et Anglicis Scotis et Galweiensibus...' (all men in the whole of his lands, French and English, Scots and Gallovidian - I assume he didn't include 'Welsh' because in his time Strathclyde was still part of Wales, not part of Scotland). So 'Scots' were not only not the only ethnic group in Scotland, they weren't the ethnic group that the King thought of first.

Then old Malleus Scotorum decided to try to assert sovereignty, and we had twenty years of war - twenty years in which our national heroes were William the Welshman and Robert de Brus, a Frenchman. And we had the Declaration of Arbroath, which is in many ways Scotland's defining national document, in which we see the concept of the sovereignty of the people emerge for the first time in post-classical Europe.

We're a mongrel nation. We fought for independence as a mongrel nation; the Anglians of Lothian, the French and English aristocracy King David had imported from England, the Gallovidians and the Welsh of Strathclyde who'd been conquered by the Scots less than fifty years earlier, fought shoulder to shoulder through the long defeats and then in the two great victories and welded us into one inclusive people. And ever since we've been able to integrate the people who choose to live among us.

To me, that's something to be proud of. We shall rise now, and be that nation again.