When law was sovereign
All of us in the modern West grew up believing that we were living under “the rule of law.” The truth, however, is that the rule of law – the sovereignty of law – ended a couple of centuries ago. And by losing it, we lost a primary driver of our civilization. Continue reading “The West That Was, Part 5”
It’s late summer in Anytown, USA: A small platform stands at the edge of a cornfield. A very average-looking person steps up to a microphone and speaks:
(Originally published April 8,2021.)
The past year has been a mass confusion of fear, misinformation, cover-ups, tyranny, crazed true-believers and more. Making sense of it has been difficult, and even those of us who try to do so professionally have come up short. But this morning the word we’ve needed rolled through my mind as I was waking up. And that word is scope. Please bear with me as I explain.
There’s a definition of happiness that I love, more or less a paraphrase of Greek philosophy:
Continue reading “The Word We Need To Make Sense of This Moment”
When I say “Ross Ulbricht’s world,” I’m not referring to his present circumstances, of course; he’s presently in a prison cell. What I’m talking about is the better world that Ross was building before the US government came crashing down upon him. That’s the world I want to live in.
The Silk Road web site Ross created was never simply a business, it was a mission… and that mission was to create a better world. Even it’s immediate mission, to break the War on Drugs, was only a first step toward something much more. And so, before I explain the world he was trying to create, I’d like you to see one of Ross’ posts on the Silk Road forum to make this initial point: Continue reading “I Want To Live In Ross Ulbricht’s World”
We are watching the Enlightenment collapse before us in real time. I’ll be fairly brief in my explanation of why this is so and how it came about, but it strikes me as something we should understand.
Bear in mind that what remains of the Enlightenment is collapsing for structural reasons. I haven’t formed this discourse around political or academic theories, I’m basing it on facts and direct observations. Obviously I’m simplifying (one can’t write history any other way), but minus the inevitable exceptions and complications, this is what happened and what is happening. Continue reading “The Collapse of The Enlightenment”
America, 1776
The development of the American colonies moved in an arc. They began with a lot of oppression (after the old world model), shook it off as the arc rose toward 1776 and the revolution, then headed slowly back down. My job today is to give you some feel of the times, and I’ll begin with some background. Continue reading “The West That Was, Part 4”
(Originally published January 18, 2021.)
Aside from a breathless stream of headlines and a few random inputs, I haven’t seen many facts regarding the events of January 6th. Circumstances made things that way for me, and now I’m glad they did, because it set me up for the really important issue: Am I allowed to ask questions about this, or am I not? Continue reading “Are We Still Allowed To Ask Questions?”
19th Century America
If we wish to grasp American life in the 19th century, it’s probably best to start by understanding that when America was young, it had no myth. Once we really understand that, the rest falls into place fairly easily. Here’s how Alexis de Tocqueville (in National Character of Americans) described it in the 1830s: Continue reading “The West That Was, Part 3”
America, 1910
1910 was well before my own time, of course, but I knew at least ten people who lived through it as adults, and discussed the era at some length with one of them, my great uncle Dave. And so this is an era I feel I can still reach out and touch. Continue reading “The West That Was, Part 2”
There’s a common refrain that “Bitcoin fixes this.” Sometimes it’s used well and other times less so, but I’m being very serious when I say that Bitcoin fixes society. And in this article I’ll explain precisely how Bitcoin is able to do this at the largest scale. Continue reading “Society: Bitcoin Fixes This”
