As a media person Mark Levin has the resources of corporate media to reinforce misinformation (principle #8). His opinions become part of an entertainment package that gets echoed until one wonders who could possibly think differently. As a media person he is trusted by certain segments of the population (principle #9), a trust that would [...]
Continue reading about Liberty and Tyranny – Misinformation Wrap-up Part Three
This is the last bit of prep work before my deconstruction of the misinformation in Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny. To recap, my conservative nephew suspected that there was misinformation in this book and he asked me to evaluate it a few weeks back. It did not fit into my agenda for The Middle Class Forum [...]
Continue reading about Liberty and Tyranny – A Liberty Model
This is the last entry in a series on the liberty of production. Previous entries covered the distinction between the liberty of production and liberty of consumption; how those two liberties have evolved over time in western culture; and the current causes and effects connected to exercising our liberty of consumption. This final entry presents [...]
I imagine all of us at some point has said something like: “I’m never buying anything from them again!” Two parts of our natural character often are revealed by that one statement. We have an instinct to trust authority figures: partly leaders, country leaders, community leaders, business leaders, media pundits, etc. In the context of [...]
The previous entry equated a high quality of life with preserving our natural rights. There is an inherent problem modern culture faces with this. It’s easy to preserve natural rights where there are limited choices that can be made. When those choices expand because of diversity so does the difficulty of preverving the natural rights [...]
Systems out of Balance is divided into three parts corresponding to the Declaration of Independence’s reference to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” I make some liberal interpretations to equate these components with natural rights. In particular I refer to a “Cultural Quality of Life” in terms of the preservation of our natural rights. [...]
This is the concluding entry for this week’s series on natural rights and cultural entitlements. The natural rights were free will, free thought and, for lack of a better concept in today’s greed-based economy, merited consequences. Privacy was introduced as a cultural entitlement that many might think is a natural right, based on mistaken assumptions [...]
The times I have come closest to death have been in the wilderness. One time involved a bear; one time involved a cliff; and one time involved a freezing hail and lightning storm. Regardless of those mishaps, when I am done with the parenting phase of my journey I will again subject myself to the [...]
The previous three entries on The Middle Class Forum described free will, free thought and merited consequences as our natural rights. Our guaranteed liberties do not stem from our natural rights so much as from cultural entitlements. The big three cultural entitlements that we frame as liberties are privacy, property and security. Out [...]
