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Cultures have always clashed and evolved.

However, I think we are in a period of cultural upheaval which is unprecedented by most measures.

I don't believe there has ever been a period in human history where such a massive assault was waged against a civilization and its culture. The assault I am referring to is that against western civilization and the culture it represents.

Never have so many been induced to hate their own civilizational history and culture. A sort of self-loathing has spread...

The terms left wing and right wing originated in the French National Assembly in 1789.

On the right side of the chamber sat the Conservatives who supported the monarchy, the established church, and the existing hierarchy.

On the left side of the assembly sat the Radicals who were in favor of a revolution and serious reforms.

When the terms leapt across the pond to America the right wing was the Conservatives and Republicans.

The left wing was the Liberals and Democrats.

I don't believe these...

When one takes an account of all the successful developments in social systems, they realize that not a one of them was planned or designed by any person or group of persons. Instead, they came to exist spontaneously without guide or guidance. It was simply the result of millions of people acting independently of one another, in their own self-interest and without understanding the implications of their actions.

I am thinking of such developments as language, markets, money, and law.

On the...

“It is no excuse for presumptuous ignorance that it is directed by insolent passion.”

Edmund Burke

Unfortunately people often confuse zeal with insight. It is both fascinating and disturbing to observe how frequently ignorance and passion are to be found in the same person.

Apathy regarding one's society may not be a criminal offense but it certainly is not something to laud or be proud of either.

A long time ago I had a custom license plate which read 'I CARE'. When I went to the DMV to pick it up, the young woman there asked me what it meant. I asked her, have you ever heard someone say 'Who cares?'. Sure she said. Well, I care I told her.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Edmund Burke

Humans think in words. Consequently, when language becomes corrupted so does our thinking ability.

The corruption of language takes man forms. One I wrote about previously, that of 'concept creep'. Another is when words are commandeered to represent something other than their original meaning.

Liberalism is one such word. Classical liberalism was more akin to the libertarianism of today.

It has been said that success is the result of experience and experience is the result of failure.

I believe that we only learn from our mistakes when we understand why they were mistakes.

As the wonderful economist and social commentator Thomas Sowell is fond of pointing out, solutions are always a trade off of one sort or another.

You can have A and B or B and C, but you cannot have A, B and C.

Knowledge is knowing how the world and the things in it work. Wisdom is knowing what to do with that knowledge.

If a person has embraced the belief that the ends always justify the means, then there is little which that person would not do to promote ends they consider worthy.

Such people cannot be trusted.

I remember when the comedian hosts of the late night shows were actually funny. Think Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and David Letterman.

They are no longer funny and their entire reason for existing seems to be to attack their political opponents.

The intelligent and observant audiences have by and large abandoned them rendering them meaningless and reducing their ratings to microscopic levels.

There was a time not that awfully long ago when newscasts were just that, a reporting of the facts.

Nowadays however, newscasts are simply advocacy journalism.

They exist to promote a preferred narrative and manipulate the facts in order to do so.

They have lost there usefulness except as a means of preaching to the choir. Everyone else simply ignores them.

While sincerity most certainly is important in our personal relationships, it is not so in society at large. The health of a society is less determined by the sincerity of its members and more determined by the effects of their choices and behavior.

'Trust the experts' has been on the lips of many these days. And, while it most certainly is true that we do well to seriously consider the opinions of those trained in a particular discipline, it is just as true that the experts often get things wrong.

Those of us living in the west today have a great advantage over those living in unadvanced societies around the globe or in earlier times.

We have an almost unlimited amount of knowledge available to us at our fingertips. We therefore have no...

The term conservative is derived from the word conserve. The idea in politics and society in generals is to conserve those elements which have stood the test of time and experience. These are referred to as traditions. Such things as the nuclear family, free markets, private property, meritocracy and the rule of law.

Liberal is derived from the Latin 'Liber' and essentially means free. The idea in politics and society in general is to remove the constraints on men which prevent them from being...

People often mistakenly use the words empathy and sympathy interchangeably. They do however have quite different meanings.

Empathy means to put your yourself in the shoes of another. This cannot be done unless you yourself have experienced what they are going through. For example I cannot empathize with someone who is suicidal, since I have never been suicidal. I can however, empathize with someone who has had a suicide in their family since i have as well.

Sympathy on the other hand means to...

Nature in her infinite wisdom has only given us the capacity to embrace a certain type and amount of suffering.

Consequently we can only feel the suffering of those outside of our small circumscribed circle very lightly.

Thus the loss of a little finger would cause us more pain than the death of five million people in some far off place.

We could take that as an indication of callousness, but actually, it is a limitation of capacity. We can only handle so much.

An observation I find fascinating is the fact that if you know a person's stance on one issue you can almost always guess what their stance will be on a number of other completely unrelated issues.

For example, if I know your position on abortion, I'm pretty certain I know your position on illegal immigration. The same people are consistently lined up on opposite sides of these varied and unrelated issues.

It has been said that elephants have excellent memories.

This fact is displayed most convincingly in the observation that elephants are often seen taking premeditated revenge for an insult which occurred in the distant past.

One of the less pleasant aspects of human nature is our ability and perhaps tendency to take pleasure in the misfortune of another.

This is most likely to occur when the person suffering the misfortune is someone whom we envy or dislike.