Relating as persons: psychology, society, politics
Other posts on centrism are here. A moderate is one who takes two opposing positions and selects something in between. The opposing positions may be anything, so there are many people who call themselves moderate (or sometimes centrist). But moderation in this sense is dependent on the different positions one selects as the ends of …
One of the original purposes of a blog was a web log, that is, a log of the interesting sites one has visited. This posting is a list of links to webpages that are notable in some way. * Voting and Elections * Approval voting – Voting each candidate yea-or-nea Demeny voting – This is …
I’ve written about this before, here. The old monarchies are as much about a geographic region as they are about a people. There is a strong identification of people and place. It’s the king of France, not the king of the French, though both are correct. The patriotic song God Save the Queen (or King), …
We live in a political time. Politics intrudes everywhere because the state intrudes everywhere. So the political stakes keep getting higher. And the political rhetoric keeps getting louder and more vulgar. The only way to lower the intensity is for the state to back off. More issues need to be taken off the political agenda …
I introduced the term geodemocracy in a previous post here. In this post I expand on the concept. A country is comprised of two basic elements: people and land. Both of these must be present for a country to exist. The government in some way must represent both the people and the land. For example, …
I have written a number of times about marriage, especially about the oxymoron “same-sex marriage.” Do a search on the word “marriage” to find them. Marriage is a social matter; societies formalize and recognize marriages within a society. There have been significant differences between societies, such as including polygamy or not. Modern societies have civil …
Harvey C. Mansfield wrote the book Manliness (Yale University Press, 2007) which is about manliness in the gender-neutral society. The author is a professor of government at Harvard University so the book is concerned with manliness in its social setting. The book is an intellectual tour de force that seeks a place for manliness in …
A previous post on racism is here. This is a big picture, philosophical look at racism or racisms (as in Francisco Bethencourt’s Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century, Princeton University Press, 2014). It is also historical, although that is incidental to the philosophical progression. Racism means treating people differently (e.g., negatively) depending on …
The following is an excerpt from John Zmirak at The Stream on July 26, 2018, here: In the 19th century, many Christians were deeply troubled by Darwin. They accepted his theories as facts that disproved the Bible’s claim to be inspired and inerrant. But they weren’t ready to slough off Christian ethics. Or even (in …
I’ve written about centrism before, here, here, here and here. There are two kinds of centrism: Lagging centrism is a political position comparable to a lagging indicator in economics. This position is characterized by going with the direction of the political winds of the day but lagging behind as if hedging one’s bets or being …
