Culture

Culture, Politics

Determinism

Sociological determinism informs our public policy. Those with a stake in the maintenance and expansion of government bureaucracies feed upon pathology and find a willing constituency among those who perceive the world in terms of victims and perpetrators. If men are not free, they are not responsible for their misdeeds and ought instead to be treated with pity for falling prey to tragic misfortunes. They are to be healed by those who understand their powerlessness. Such enabling has produced a host of psychotherapeutic terms and treatments attempting to explain every human condition and every degrading act.

Via Determinism, Dependency, and the Irreducible Person @ Acton Institute.

Culture, Liberty, Philosophy

‘Hayek’s Modern Family’

“A key part of Hayek’s intellectual framework is the idea that knowledge is dispersed, contextual, and often tacit. No one knows everything, and it is those closest to choices and their direct consequences who are in the best position to know what to do. This argument is at the core of Hayek’s objections to socialism…

Crime, Culture

Sociologist Alice Goffman even less credible than first believed

“Now she has written a response to my critique, and I am even less certain how much of the book [On the Run] is true. Goffman essentially admits that she embellished and exaggerated her account of a crucial episode, which should leave even the most sympathetic readers doubting her word. As I observed in my…

Culture, Free Speech, Schools

Robust speech and its doubters

“Some of the people who support creating such “safe spaces” consider themselves feminists, but I regard them as bad or corrupted feminists at best. Brian Leiter has been calling the current campus culture the New Infantilism. I think it’s an apt term. We’re treating college students as if they were  infants who must be protected,…

Crime, Culture, Police, Police Brutality, Police Misconduct

The Key Question from Baltimore

Question: If the brutality of law enforcement sparked protests, why would anyone expect police to be able to stop them? Answer: Local community leaders have already played a key role in peaceful protests, and they were out in the streets during the violence, prevailing upon demonstrators to remain calm and peaceful—and often doing so with…

Business, Crony Capitalism, Culture

Conservatives are wasting their time with big business

Matt Lewis at the Daily Beast grounds his argument mostly in a discussion of social issues where  he contends that big business is too liberal, but it’s more generally true that conservatives are wasting their time with big business, with big anything… Back to big business. For a while now, conservatives like Tim Carney have inveighed against “crony capitalism,”…

Culture

The Best Advice You’ll Get Today

strangle the shit out of your ego. creep up on it and stab it in the shower. do what you must, but kill it, everyday. — dream hampton (@dreamhampton) March 29, 2015

Crime, Culture, Law, Liberty, Misconduct, Police, Police Misconduct

Ferguson, Mo.

“In weighing whether to bring discrimination charges against the Ferguson Police Department, the Justice Department has been ‘seriously examining’ allegations that the city’s enforcement of minor offenses discriminated against minorities and often led to jail time and to fines that lined the city’s coffers,” a law enforcement official confirmed to POLITICO on Tuesday. “Justice Department…

Culture, Film, Food

Film: Ethiopia

Ethiopia! from The Perennial Plate on Vimeo. We travelled to Ethiopia for two weeks and filmed the making of injera, false banana and coffee as well as everything else we saw. Please watch, enjoy and visit this amazing country! Created by: www.theperennialplate.com In Partnership with Intrepid Travel: http://www.intrepidtravel.com/foood/ Filmed & edited by: Daniel Klein (…

Crime, Culture, Nannyism

‘Just Don’t Let Your Kids Play Outside’

When playing is a crime: Children’s book author Kari Anne Roy was recently visited by the Austin police and Child Protective Services for allowing her son Isaac, age 6, to do the unthinkable: Play outside, up her street, unsupervised. He’d been out there for about 10 minutes when Roy’s doorbell rang. She opened it to…

Culture, Police Misconduct

Django Unchained Actress Handcuffed by LAPD After Kissing White Husband

Another day in post-racial America: Danièle Watts, an African-American actress who played Coco in Django Unchained and appears as Martin Lawrence’s daughter on FX’s Partners, says she was handcuffed and detained on Thursday by police in Los Angeles who suspected she was a prostitute. According to Watts, she was approached by two police officers after…

Crime, Culture, Police

Community Policing Turns Camden, N.J. Around

While force after force turns turns to militarization (and thus intimidation), Camden, N.J. has embraced community policing: It has been 16 months since Camden took the unusual step of eliminating its police force and replacing it with a new one run by the county. Beleaguered by crime, budget cuts and bad morale, the old force…