Applying Principles

When initiated coercion is legalized, it attracts those who are willing to use it.* Those who are more willing to use legalized, initiated coercion than those who are hesitant will advance faster in the system. Eventually, the more willing rise to the top. The more willing, then, use the initiated coercion against those they have bypassed and anyone else who gets in their way. This in essence, though not his words, is the identification made by F. A. Hayek in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom (chapter 10, “Why the Worst Get on Top”). The identification explains how and...

By Jerry Kirkpatrick Vote0 0

Psychological independence, or more specifically independent judgment, means that one’s self-esteem, integrity, and courage, should be sufficiently strong to resist outside pressures for conformity. Independent judgment should be a fundamental aim of parenting and teaching, but, unfortunately, is not. A number of well-known studies from the twentieth century, however, have examined, albeit superficially, the relationship between independence and conformity. Solomon Asch in the 1950s explicitly approached the issue in terms of independence versus conformity, and even referred to Henrik Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People and Ibsen’s notion of a conforming “compact majority.” Ibsen’s protagonist, Dr. Thomas Stockmann, stood...

By Jerry Kirkpatrick Vote0 0

The word “hysteria” does not mean “wildly or melodramatically emotional,” although it can be used that way to describe certain people in certain situations. Hysteria is a psychological problem largely dependent on the attention patients receive from their significant others, whether family, physician, or psychiatrist. For example, Jean-Martin Charcot’s patients in the late nineteenth century mimicked the symptoms of epilepsy because they were housed on the same ward as epileptics who received considerable attention from Charcot. When the hysterics (after Charcot’s death) were moved to another ward, their epileptic symptoms disappeared. Hysteria is a form of self-deception, as psychiatrist Paul...

By Jerry Kirkpatrick Vote3 3

“I may be ignorant but I ain’t stupid.” Hold that thought. I’ll get back to it. Here are a few other thoughts. A college professor quotes her plumber as saying, “You pay me for what I know, not what I do.” The professor’s comment? “Oh, a fellow professional! My goodness! Ha, ha, ha, ha.” Message: only when hell freezes over will we be fellow professionals. A visitor offered Hostess bread responds: “Oh my! Hostess bread. I don’t know the last time I ever ate Hostess bread!” Message: I cannot stoop so low as to eat such a mass marketed product....

By Jerry Kirkpatrick Vote0 0

Why does statism and its collectivist progeny, communism, socialism, fascism, and, especially, democratic socialism, still attract followers? The answer is still Ayn Rand’s. You can argue the impracticality of statism until you are blue in the face, but unless you reject the moral ideal on which statism rests—altruism, the doctrine of self-sacrifice—your listener will respond by saying the failures of the USSR or Mao’s China or today’s Venezuela were caused by the selfish dictators who usurped power and destroyed the ideal. In our present cultural, historical, and epistemological ignorance and chaos, discussion of ideas is rare and discussion in terms...

By Jerry Kirkpatrick Vote1 0

A smear, according to Merriam-Webster’s unabridged is “a deliberate and usually unsubstantiated charge or accusation intended to foment distrust or hatred against the person or organization so charged.” As a logical fallacy, it is one-half of ad hominem. The fallacy runs as follows: “Mr. X is immoral. Therefore, his argument is false.” Today’s smear merchants, to use Sharyl Attkisson’s term, specialize in using the first sentence, embellished and sensationalized in varied ways, and omit any pretense of talking about logical argument. In a world where facts don’t matter, our culture has become Goebbelsian. (See also 1, 2, 3, 4.) Attkisson’s...

By Jerry Kirkpatrick Vote1 0

Slinging unfriendly epithets today has become sport, so I thought I’d throw out a few myself. Political leftists can be described as intellectually bankrupt, hate-filled, envy-ridden fascists. They’re also postmodern progressives, but, unfortunately, they don't consider those terms to be insulting. I do. Let me start with the left-right political spectrum. It goes back to the 1789 French National Assembly. Aristocrats and churchmen, supporters of the king, sat on the right, while the revolutionaries, some of whom were legitimate classical liberals, sat on the left. In the ensuing two hundred years, the terms have varied in nuanced ways, but essentially...

By Jerry Kirkpatrick Vote1 0

A free society is a political association of individuals in which each possesses the identical protection to act without being coerced—by anyone, but especially the government—to work cooperatively via the division of labor to produce prosperity and peace. Association is entirely voluntary between self-interested consenting adults who exercise their capacity to reason to produce values that are traded with each other to acquire spiritual and material benefits. The result is enhancement of each other’s lives. Spiritual benefits include friendship, love, and other non-material values that are not exchanged on the market for money. Material benefits, however, most often are so...

By Jerry Kirkpatrick Vote1 0

A familiar comment today runs like this: “X was done with the best of intentions, but unfortunately the consequences were otherwise.” Bad consequences, then, are excused because of the good intentions. The comment is heard especially in politics, such as, “The proposal was well-intended, as were the regulations and laws, but the policy did not help the poor, did not increase the nation’s wealth, or reduce crime,” etc. Were the politicians well-intended, even when they failed to acknowledge a connection between their policies and the bad consequences? Were the politicians’ supporters and voters well-intended? And what about the theoreticians who...

By Jerry Kirkpatrick Vote0 0

Socrates was an independent personality in ancient Greece, much like the boy in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Socrates said too many prominent citizens were scantily clad. As a result, he was convicted by democratic vote in an Athenian court on charges of impiety and corruption of the youth. He was also then condemned to death by democratic vote. Democracy, it would seem, killed Socrates, though some would say it was his obstinate insistence on remaining independent. The question arises, must we die for our independence? Doesn’t life require compromise? The concept of rights in Socrates’...

By Jerry Kirkpatrick Vote0 0

Let us suppose a US president recommends a plan to reduce capital gains and income taxes to fifteen percent. (I would prefer zero for both, but fifteen will do.) Here are three possible headlines: “New Tax Plan Promises Increased Wealth for the Poor and the Hope of Freedom for America’s Persecuted Minority” “Tax Cuts for the Rich” “New Tax Reductions Unveiled” The first would be my fantasy headline, one that I do not expect to see in the near future, but would like to see spread across all columns of major newspapers. It is biased, though I would call it...

By Jerry Kirkpatrick Vote0 0

On the Worst—and Best—Rising to the Top Apr 10, 2018

The Deference to Authority Studies Mar 8, 2018

The Repressed Memory Craze and Hysteria as Mimicry of Physical and Psychological Disorders Feb 16, 2018

More on Condescension toward the Weak, Stupid, and Ignorant Jan 13, 2018

The Meaning of Sacrifice and the Staying Power of Statism Dec 12, 2017

The Fascist Left Oct 9, 2017

The Meaning of Free Society Sep 9, 2017

On Bias and Its Underlying Theories of Human Nature Jun 11, 2017