Heard an interview this morning with Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People. ( Click here for rant. )

I promised mojave_wolf a post about the destruction of the World Trade Center and the explanations of it, to spare ataxi from hosting a discussion of it on an unrelated post of his.

( And this cut spares you, the reader, from having it on your friends page! )

As the candidates jockey for ideological position, we'd do well to remember:

( No matter who takes office in 2009, good policy and moral policy will only come about through mass public pressure. )

You know those hypothetical moral dilemmas that people use to illustrate ethical principles? For instance, would you kill one child to save a thousand of them, or let the thousand die through inaction? Is it acceptable to steal bread to feed your children? Objectivists love these things, since they let you pour energy into debates without having to ( Read more... )

During his recent Colbert Report appearance, it was subtly revealed that Tom DeLay made a common error in his new book: ( 'I believe it was Adolf Hitler who first acknowledged...' )

David Noble says that the corporation was deliberately constructed to be the "economic man" that mere humans could never be, interested only in its own monetary gain. Undistracted by familial ties, religion, solidarity with others, or a search for meaning in its existence, the corporation's legally-mandated psychopathy was seen by some as ( Read more... )

If every individual received the full value of his or her labor power, rather than being exploited by an owning class, then how would we realize public goods like infrastructural investment and research? Perhaps this is why every instance of "really existing socialism" has had a strong central state ( Read more... )

I took fifteen months off out of guilt and embarrassment at my previous post. Rereading it just now, it wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered it. You guys made some good points which I want to respond to at some point. Sorry for not reading your LJ in the meantime. I'll try to catch up somewhat, but I was barely able to tread water on my friends ( Read more... )

Disclaimer: The following commentary is my take as an outsider, having just read these letters to Z Magazine (subscription required, I think). I cannot point to specific documents or strategic discussions to support it.

( The Green Party was founded on the assumption that significant numbers of Americans were good socialists who were only voting for Democrats and Republicans because they had no better options. )

http://rwor.org/a/027/yoo-crushing-innocent-child-nazi.htmRead more... )