August 2023
Are Humans Born Good or Evil?
Thinkers have debated for centuries about the basic nature of human beings. Do babies really come into the world innocent? Are they blank slates who are shaped by the culture in which they are born? Or are they, as some religions say, born in sin and must work hard to redeem themselves with God to go to Heaven when they die
These are questions that cannot be answered scientifically until we determine what "good" and "evil" are. Better to ask if human beings are programmed to be be more...
These are questions that cannot be answered scientifically until we determine what "good" and "evil" are. Better to ask if human beings are programmed to be be more...
America: Good and bad
Just when we think we know what kind of country we are, history comes in to correct the record. We currently have Reactionary governors who want our children to uncritically love our country and think it the best in the world. On the extreme other side Radical Leftists want our children to see our dark underbelly, slavery and its consequences, and dwell on it.
These two extreme views fail our children, who, unlike other children in democracies around the world, are taugh more...
When Bad Guys Fall Out
We have been watching the implosion of the Putin Empire, a fascinating drama unfolding on television. History once more repeats itself: villains eventually fall out. I am just surprised it took this long.
What defines a "bad guy"? My definition is a person with no compassion, totally selfish and totally ruthless, capable of summoning willing toadies for support, toadies who are also motivated by power.
We have our own, of course, Donald J. Trump, whose grip more...
April 2022
Good and Evil Debate
Good and Evil are biblical terms that make the secular among us uncomfortable. Most human behavior lies somewhere in the spectrum between absolute good and absolute evil. There are exceptions, of course, people who are "wired" differently. There are a very few who cannot feel physical pain, which makes it impossible for them to imagine what pain is. (Such people make perfect torturers, if given the opportunity and are not taught differently.)
There are others wired on the more...
October 2020
Empathy: Nature or Nurture?
"Empathy" has been much in the news lately, largely because of a presidential issue: living with a leader with no empathy. We rarely have to think about the presence or lack of empathy because most human beings have empathy to one degree or another. Empathy is the ability to imagine the feelings or pain of another human being.
Philosophers have long debated the nature of human behavior, wondering how much behavior is hard wired (Nature) in our genes and how much is shaped by our n more...
Philosophers have long debated the nature of human behavior, wondering how much behavior is hard wired (Nature) in our genes and how much is shaped by our n more...
Empathy: Nature or Nurture?
"Empathy" has been much in the news lately, largely because of a presidential issue: living with a leader with no empathy. We rarely have to think about the presence or lack of empathy because most human beings have empathy to one degree or another. Empathy is the ability to imagine the feelings or pain of another human being.
Philosophers have long debated the nature of human behavior, wondering how much behavior is hard wired (Nature) in our genes and how much is shaped more...
February 2020
The Trumpification of Revenge
Our Judeo-Christian faiths tell us that "vengeance is the Lord's," one of those religious admonitions usually violated more than observed. Jesus enlarged that issue by urging "turning the other cheek," again, a rule rarely obeyed in our long human history.
But in modern Western Civilization, rule of law has replaced personal or clan vendetta. We trust to the courts for redress, and have become accustomed to seeking justice rather than vengeance. However, in some, their "id" (the more...
But in modern Western Civilization, rule of law has replaced personal or clan vendetta. We trust to the courts for redress, and have become accustomed to seeking justice rather than vengeance. However, in some, their "id" (the more...
November 2019
Do We Know What Makes People Evil?
What could make a nice Middle-Class Norwegian murder 74 people because he hated his government? Or make an American Baptist college student convert to Islam and murder soldiers at an Arkansas recruitment center? Or a 19-year-old slaughter innocents at a Garlic Festival? Does human evil come from our genes (nature) or from our upbringing (nurture)? The debate is unresolved.
Genetic advocates can show that certain things in brain chemistry can create impulsiveness, hot tem more...
August 2017
"Palace Intrigues" in Art and History.
Governing well is not easy, and governing well under a democracy is not the most efficient system. The ancient Greeks, such as Plato, tried to imagine how to set up a republic, speculating with his friends what running an ideal society should require. It is obvious that the most efficient system of government is a dictatorship; however, that efficiency is trumped when the dictator has a bad character. There are few "philosopher kings" in history; far more, even when beginning with good i more...
Humor Can Bring Down a State
One characteristic of nasty governments?theocracies, dictatorships, and authoritarian monarchies is that they have no sense of humor. The one thing that can put a frightening government on the defensive is to know that their subjects are laughing at them.
In Jacques Barzun?s final book, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present (Harper Collins, 2000), he tracks the fall of the French monarchy and the French Revolution to the point where the French elites had no fear of makin more...
In Jacques Barzun?s final book, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present (Harper Collins, 2000), he tracks the fall of the French monarchy and the French Revolution to the point where the French elites had no fear of makin more...
July 2015
Putin Has His Own Private Assassins
I don?t know how many of you remember the story of the "Sorcerer?s Apprentice," charmingly done in the Disney film Fantasia. Mickey Mouse played the Sorcerer?s apprentice, tasked with sweeping out the house. The lazy rascal found the master?s book and tried his hand at magic, turning the broom into an army of brooms who swept and went to the well, nearly flooding the house and coming close to drowning Mickey until the Sorcerer returned and put things to rights, punishing the foolish apprentice.< more...
Poor Jihadi John: People Picked on Him!
"Jihadi John" has been identified as Mohammad Emwazi, a young immigrant from Kuwait, welcomed and reared as a privileged Englishman with a college degree in computer science from the University of Westminster in London. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!
But let us look at the surprise that so many people express that this "nice, gentle boy" should turn into the monster whom we all saw taking pleasure in decapitating people (who had done him no harm) in a most the more...
January 2014
Polio Returns to Countries Needing Regime Change
The world almost eradicated polio forever. The UN’s World Health Organization has struggled to reach every remote corner of the globe to provide babies with the few drops of medicine that could make the world free of what was once a frightening and crippling disease.
So, why hasn’t it been finished? Some very stupid and obviously evil Muslim clerics have ordered mothers to reject the polio campaign, which they claim is designed by the west to make Muslim girls sterile. more...
December 2013
Countries Can Be Judged By Their Internments
During the 20th century, a number of nations engaged in expelling populations or interning those deemed “dangerous.” Turkey was the first with the expulsion and internment of their Christian Armenian population, an action that resulted in the first of the century’s genocides. Their World War I ally, Germany, was horrified and told the Turks that this was awful.
Then, Germany did the same in the late 1930s and in the 1940s, where the supposed “resettlement” of Jews deemed more...
Then, Germany did the same in the late 1930s and in the 1940s, where the supposed “resettlement” of Jews deemed more...
Alarms Bells Are Going Off As Al Qaeda Networks Spread.
As a historian with a long view, I avoid alarming predictions of doom and gloom. Although Militant Islam is very dangerous, I don’t think it has longevity. Wherever Islamists take over, they arouse the intense hatred of their subject people. Muslims in Mali, for example, celebrated when the French Army chased out the jihadis.
It is one thing to fantasize about a restored Islamic Caliphate (religious dictatorship) but quite another to live under it. Like all other meteoric phenom more...
It is one thing to fantasize about a restored Islamic Caliphate (religious dictatorship) but quite another to live under it. Like all other meteoric phenom more...
Insane, or just “Intellectually Challenged?”
When criminal perpetrators go to court, lawyers and judges still have problems with the “insanity defense.” The courts in Florida determined that an obviously demented man knew what he was doing when he murdered eight people in the 1970s. They finally got through all the appeals and executed him, to the howls of those who both oppose capital punishment and especially oppose executing the “insane” or, in some cases, the Intellectually Challenged (very low IQ). To some others, the fact th more...
July 2013
Making Excuses for Jihadis.
With the decline of religious influence on our values, the word “evil” has been largely dropped by the modern educated class. We look to the causes of bad behavior---such as the environment, abuse by parents, or bad wiring in the brain. Bleeding hearts like to think that the malefactor is not responsible, turning him into a “victim” of other forces. One idiotic professor quoted in the recent issue of Rolling Stone, blamed the murderous rampage of the Tsarnaev brothers on “American poli more...
Are We in an Everlasting War?
President Obama recently declared that it was time to end our war on terror. Some consider this stupid because individual terror attacks still go on, but I think the President is right. Unless we plan to invade Pakistan or Saudi Arabia and clean out their Islamists, we no longer have a war in which a country is involved. He did not say that terrorism was over; but these nasty terror cells can be managed by police and FBI and tried as criminals.
President Obama does have a more...
September 2011
How Did the Media Cover 9/11?
Ten years after the most horrific foreign attack on America (the British in I812 and the Japanese in 1941), we are looking back to see how this attack affected our national character. Considering the horrific nature of 9/11, we responded with astonishing nobility and some expected missteps. We are a nation that habitually underestimates an enemy-and then overestimates this same enemy. It takes a while to get it right.
Watching how people in New York, especially the first r more...
Do We Know What Makes People Evil?
What could make a nice Middle Class Norwegian murder 74 people because he hated his government? Or make an American Baptist college student convert to Islam and murder soldiers at an Arkansas recruitment center? Does human evil come from our genes (nature) or from our upbringing (nurture)? The debate is unresolved.
Genetic advocates can show that certain things in brain chemistry can create impulsiveness, hot temper, and sometimes inability to empathize with the pains of more...
Iran, Like Some Here, Also Believes In Apocalyptic Myths.
We live in a time of strange beliefs. The latest comes from Iran. Although a country with skyscrapers, metro subways, and nuclear aspirations, their leaders believe in sorcery. The conflict between obnoxious President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Khamenei has now produced a spate of arrests; 25 people, associated with Ahmadinejad's Chief of Staff, Mashaei, have been accused of being “magicians who evoke djinns” (evil spirits)-yes, like the ones who come more...
November 2010
Time for a National Dialogue on Crime?
No matter what we do, our prisons seem to get more and more crowded. Judges are often given no choice in the sentencing for certain crimes, and the crimes we list on the books keep growing. Just as we need to redo the nation’s infrastructure each half-century, we need to redo our justice system.
Definitions. Crimes are actions by a person to deliberately harm another or others: physical violence (assaults, rapes, murders), property harms (theft, holdups, home invasions more...