- Jul 2024
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www.gurwinder.blog www.gurwinder.blog
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On X, meanwhile, there is a self-propagating system known as “the culture war”. This game consists of trying to score points (likes and retweets) by attacking the enemy political tribe. Unlike in a regular war, the combatants can’t kill each other, only make each other angrier, so little is ever achieved, except that all players become stressed by constant bickering. And yet they persist in bickering, if only because their opponents do, in an endless state of mutually assured distraction.
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- Aug 2023
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We and the Japanesethought, in the i86o's, how wonderful it would be if thisresult could be achieved. We and they fixed our minds on theeconomic development of Japan and modified the educationalsystem of that country on "American lines" to promote thiseconomic development. So the rich got richer, the poor gotpoorer, the powerful got more bellicose; and Japan becamea menace to the world and to itself.
Writing in 1951, Hutchins is writing too close to the time period of post World War II to have a better view of this topic. He's fashioned far too simple a story as a result.
There was a lack of critical thinking and over-reliance on top down approval which was harmful in the Japanese story of this time period though.
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- Nov 2022
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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“We’re at war. This is a political war, a cultural war, and it’s a spiritual war,” Ogles said after he won his primary. “And as we go forward, we’ve got to get back to honoring God and country.”
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- Aug 2022
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claremontreviewofbooks.com claremontreviewofbooks.com
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If conservatives are right about the importance of virtue, morality, religious faith, stability, character and so on in the individual; if they are right about sexual morality or what came to be termed “family values”; if they are right about the importance of education to inculcate good character and to teach the fundamentals that have defined knowledge in the West for millennia; if they are right about societal norms and public order; if they are right about the centrality of initiative, enterprise, industry, and thrift to a sound economy and a healthy society; if they are right about the soul-sapping effects of paternalistic Big Government and its cannibalization of civil society and religious institutions; if they are right about the necessity of a strong defense and prudent statesmanship in the international sphere—if they are right about the importance of all this to national health and even survival, then they must believe—mustn’t they?—that we are headed off a cliff.
A breathless paragraph that does articulate well and generously the conservative (nay) reactionary position of those who year to return to an "orange" (or even amber) order before the arrival of green.
The issue is they want to go back rather than forward which is the only option. We need to "transclude" green -- and orange and amber. Yes we do want virtue, and values, and (probably) a reduced government -- and more. And we need to recognize difference and systematic injustice and a multiplicity of perspectives. And go beyond that into something new.
This ultimately is simply reactionary. One can sympathize and appreciate it. One imagine what it was like for Catholics in their old ordered world with the all good things of the high middle ages bemoaning the arrival of the protestant heretics. But there is no going back. We can go forward -- and still take much of what was good from that past.
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- Jun 2022
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Local file Local file
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Between 1914 and 1980, inequalities in income and wealth decreasedmarkedly in the Western world as a whole (the United Kingdom,Germany, France, Sweden, and the United States), and in Japan,Russia, China, and India, although in different ways, which we willexplore in a later chapter. Here we will focus on the Western countriesand improve our understanding of how this “great redistribution”took place.
Inequalities in income and wealth decreased markedly in the West from 1914 to 1980 due to a number of factors including:<br /> - Two World Wars and the Great Depression dramatically overturned the power relationships between labor and capital<br /> - A progressive tax on income and inheritance reduced the concentration of wealth and helped increase mobility<br /> - Liquidation of foreign and colonial assets as well as dissolution of public debt
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