What would Sun Tzu say about…
I am glad that the commentariat has moved past the “dead porcupine” stage.
On the subject of totalitarian impulses in today’s US, I am moved by the whole Gabby Douglas kerfuffle. As a mid-50s guy who would simply die if I contemplated gymnastics …
This is a good explanation of how economic unfairness is perpetuated. From Robert Paul Wolff, “Autobiography Of An Ex-White Man”
When does authoritarianism shift to totalitarianism?
Politically, authoritarianism is a system in which the state asserts its supreme power over a region, then uses that power to dictate rules and behaviors. There are a variety of authoritarianisms, including Stalinism, Maoism, Putinism, Fascism, Kimism, dictatorship, tyranny, aristocracy, monarchy and so forth.
We were sitting around in my kitchen, after I had just helped her make her first batch of soap. The room smelled of frankincense and we were eating pizza washed down with red wine.
Negligent, ambitious, and perverse princes are the real causes of public adversities, of useless and unjust wars continually
depopulating the earth, of greedy and despotic governments, destroying the benefactions of nature for men. The rapacity of the courts discourages agriculture, blots out industry, causes famine, contagion, misery; Heaven is neither cruel nor favorable to the wishes of the people; it is their haughty chiefs, who always have a heart of brass.
The fundamental assumption in moral philosophy is that men are responsible for their actions. From this assumption, it follows necessarily, as Kant pointed out, that men are metaphysically free, which is to say that in some sense they are capable of choosing how they shall act.
Now that I’ve established a few of the basics of data reliability, and I can see that many of you understand the problem fairly well, I have a couple additional points I’d like to make on a related topic.
(It’s dark and quiet.)
SPOCK: Captain.
(There’s a red jacket draped across a console, with white crystals scattered in and around it.)
KIRK: Just their uniforms left.
(source)