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#cartoon #Peter Arno #bryn mawr

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#cartoon #Peter Arno

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Social traditions, Burke pointed out, are forms of knowledge. They contain the residues of many trials and errors, and the inherited solutions to problems that we all encounter... Social traditions exist because they enable a society to reproduce itself. Destroy them heedlessly and you remove the guarantee offered by one generation to the next. In discussing tradition, we are not discussing arbitrary rules and conventions. We are discussing *answers* that have been discovered to enduring *questions*. These answers are tacit, shared, embodied in social practices and inarticulate expectations. Those who adopt them are not necessarily able to explain them

Roger Scruton (1949-2020) English Conservative philosopher

#quotes #politics #philosophy #roger scruton #edmund burke

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#generations #presented without comment

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“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”

Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) U.S. president

The state is to protect us from force and fraud not from folly.

#quotes #philosophy #politics #ronald reagan

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"Democracy can itself be as tyrannical as a dictatorship, since it is the extent, not the source, of government power that impinges on freedom."

-William F Buckley (1925-2008) American Conservative political commentator.

#democracy #liberty #conservative #quotes #William F Buckley

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Spinoza argued for a social and political order where individuals have the “right to express their own opinions about matters of conscience.”

— Matthew Stewart.

#quotes #spinoza #philosophy #modernity

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#quotes #philosophy #spinoza #rebecca goldstein #geometry #emotions #psychology

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“After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else; whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.”

— Spinoza, The Treatise on the Emendation of the Understanding.

#quotes #philosophy #psychology #spinoza

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“A heretic is one who has his own opinions. What does having an opinion mean? It means following one’s own ideas, one’s own particular notions.”

— Jacque-Bénigne Lignel Bossuet (1627-1704), the Bishop of Meaux, as quoted in The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World by Matthew Stewart.

#quotes #heresy #heretics #history

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“Since, therefore, no one can abdicate his freedom of judgment and feeling; since every man is by indefeasible natural right the master of his own thoughts, it follows that men thinking in diverse and contradictory fashions, cannot, without disastrous results, be compelled to speak only according to the dictates of the supreme power.… [T]he object of government is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them to develope their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger, or deceit, nor watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice. In fact, the true aim of government is liberty.”

— Benedict de Spinoza, 1670.

#quotes #philosophy #politics #freedom of speech #freedom of thought #Benedict de Spinoza #spinoza

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Ahhh…so true.

The suppression of free speech rids the world of a particular error at the expense of empowering error in general.

#quotes #politics #philosophy #free speech

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"It is far easier to concentrate power than to concentrate knowledge. That is why so much social engineering backfires, and why so many despots have led their countries into disasters."

Thomas Sowell (1930-) American economist.

#quotes #thomas sowell #social engineering #knowledge

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The U.S. congressional ban of the popular app Tiktok may thankfully curtail information gathering attempts by communist China, but it will not (as some people are hoping) remedy the corrosive mental effects of such media on young people. There were websites like TikTok before it existed (though less successful) and there will be similar sites after it, should it be banned. It will be replaced. So going forward it will be up to the parents of younger children not yet shaped by such media to responsibly steward their development. It is not always easy, but we cannot allow interaction with digital devices to shape their early development. We must step in and be proactive. A child who's attention span and mental concentration are sabotaged at the elementary school level when his intellectual curiosity and elasticity are at its peak is truly tragic. What a child is exposed to early on, hour after hour, and day after day will shape his mind; and at a certain point it will do so permanently.

#tiktok ban #tiktok #politics

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#national review #joe biden #politics #Dan McLaughlin

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#Andrew Cuomo #new york city #migrant crisis #joe biden #blunder #politics

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Biden’s New Ideas: More Taxes, More Spending

DAN MCLAUGHLIN | MAR 8 2024

Meet the new Bidenomics, same as the old Bidenomics.

Joe Biden is trailing in the polls. Voters overwhelmingly believe he’s too old for the job. Soaring inflation is crippling ordinary families. The border is wide open. Public safety is at an all-time low. So, what was this administration’s big, shiny idea for Thursday’s State of the Union address?

Tax hikes and yet more government handouts! Our 81-year-old President couldn’t be less original if he was stumbling up Air Force One.

#quotes #politics #joe biden #tax and spend #national review #Dan McLaughlin