Dr. David Safir, a pediatrician, believes that spanking your children can be an effective tool for parents. In To spank or not to spank, where do you draw the line?, Sari Zeidler examines the benefits and drawbacks of physical punishment. Dr. Safir insists that children need to learn that society has …
I continue to listen to Charles Anderson’s lectures on Political, Economic, and Social Thought. We just finished Plato and have started Aristotle. Professor Anderson made the point that the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers tried to deal with and come to terms with the notion of change. According to Anderson, the Greeks …
Nature has a new article about research from Yale’s Dan Kahan on how we choose to accept or deny climate change arguments less on our scientific literacy and more on the beliefs of those with whom we share close ties (The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived …
E. J. Dionne, in Conservatives used to care about community. What happened?, comments on several divergent elements in conservative thought and practice. He begins by lamenting that conservative Republicans “have abandoned American conservatism’s most attractive features: prudence, caution and a sense that change should be gradual.” This description of conservatism follows closely …
I’ve been enjoying listening to a reading of Murray Rothbart’s Economic Thought Before Adam Smith. I’m even finding the slow monotone of the the reader quite a pleasure. Rothbart is a contemporary adherent of the Austrian School of Economics; this book examines the development of economic thought in the context of …
Adam Smith describes society, both economic and social/moral, as developing from webs of human interactions. We build our societies from the bottom up by virtue of our unscripted person-to-person interactions. Natural law, on the other hand, defines society in a more top-down fashion. Society does, and should, follow the dictates …
As I get to the end of Patrick Allitt’s lectures on The Conservative Tradition, he summarizes the different strands of conservatism. While our political discussion these days seems to take place in a two-dimensional world, more or less conservative, more or less liberal, I’m struck at the three dimensional world of …
Floyd Norris’ article in Friday’s New York Times, In Europe, a Marriage Shows Signs of Fraying, quotes Jens Weidman, president of the Bundesbank. “A widespread lack of trust in public finances weighs heavily on growth,” he said. “There is uncertainty regarding potential future tax increases, while funding costs are rising for private …
Today’s lecture from Patrick Allitt’s course on The Conservative Tradition included information on Richard Weaver, a conservative American writer in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Weaver believed that western thought went wrong with William of Occam’s nominalism. In realism, or what we might call idealism, taking the common example of the chair, there …
Adam Smith wrote two books. In one, the Theory of Moral Sentiments, he discusses the need and ability of individuals in society to be sympathetic to others. In the other, The Wealth of Nations, he discusses how self-interest benefits society. Some have seen a contradiction in these two outlooks. James Otteson titles …
© 2025 The Political Mind
Powered by Esplanade Theme by One Designs and WordPress