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Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Have humanity’s inchoate “yearnings” triumphed?

Is the Chief Rabbinate of Israel Catholic?

Related source » Why Obama’s Whig History Is All Wrong: 'via Blog this'
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]

“Liberty as we understand it in the United States has been the exception not the rule — and its survival over the past three centuries the consequence not of happy foreordination but of the good guys in the world having enjoyed unmatched military and financial supremacy. Having known little else, the historically myopic will find it tempting to presume that our present global order represents the immutable state of nature. It does not.”
— Charles C. W. Cooke, SEPTEMBER 3, 2014 (nationalreview.com)


I believe that all of the Left’s failed policies derive from what Thomas Sowell called their “unconstrained vision” (the worldview that Steven Pinker refers to as the “utopian vision”), viz.,
Sowell argues that the unconstrained vision relies heavily on the belief that human nature is essentially good. Those with an unconstrained vision distrust decentralized processes and are impatient with large institutions and systemic processes that constrain human action. They believe there is an ideal solution to every problem, and that compromise is never acceptable. Collateral damage is merely the price of moving forward on the road to perfection. Sowell often refers to them as “the self anointed.” Ultimately they believe that man is morally perfectible. Because of this, they believe that there exist some people who are further along the path of moral development, have overcome self-interest and are immune to the influence of power and therefore can act as surrogate decision-makers for the rest of society.”
I would hazard an even more succinct generalization of the Left’s folly: There is no basis for the Left's “belief that human nature is essentially good”. Anecdotally, there is more support for a belief that human nature is essentially bad.

Charles C. W. Cooke points out: "... the historically myopic will find it tempting to presume that our present global order represents the immutable state of nature. It does not." As Jesse Pinkman would say it, "It does not — bitch!"
Post 2,385 Have humanity’s inchoate “yearnings” triumphed?

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