Tag: Society
-
The One Constant in Communist, Capitalist, and/or Liberal Democratic Societies
Hi. I want to share an interesting theory about the modern world: Communist states and Liberal Capitalist societies are actually quite similar. At their core, they both share the theory of a privileged elite class who must rule over the masses. The systems are actually more alike than they are unalike. This is obviously an…
-
Dewey on the “Shadow Cast on Society by Big Business”
I was skimming my archive and came across this wonderful essay from Dewey. John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, democratic socialist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. A well-known public intellectual, he was also a major voice of progressive education and liberalism. John Dewey: The Later Works,…
-
John Rawls and the Veil of Ignorance: A Thought Experiment on Fairness
Edited from the Book of Life, Political Theory: John Rawls Many of us feel that our societies are a little – or even plain totally – ‘unfair’. But we have a hard time explaining our sense of injustice to the powers that be in a way that sounds rational and without personal pique or bitterness.…
-
Bakunin’s Prediction: A Quick History on Using the “People’s Stick”
According to Chomsky, there exists a prediction from the world of the social sciences that ever came so dramatically true. The prediction is from Mikhail Bakunin, everyone’s favorite Anarchist 🙂 Very perceptively, Bakunin predicted that the rising class of intellectuals in both liberal democracies and authoritarian states will come to identify themselves as a specialized…
-
Moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal
At the height of the Detroit rebellion, on July 28, 1967, President Johnson appointed a National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders to answer three basic questions about the riots: What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again? Mounting civil unrest since 1965 had spawned riots…
-
The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission
Perhaps the most striking feature of the new Administration is the role played in it by the Trilateral Commission. The mass media had little to say about this matter during the Presidential campaign — in fact, the connection of the Carter group to the Commission was recently selected as “the best censored news story of…
-
A Response to the Death of Osama bin Laden
This has to be said: On May 1, 2011 Pres. Barack Obama appeared on national television with the spontaneous announcement that Osama bin Laden, the purported organizer of the tragic events of September 11th 2001, was killed by military forces in Pakistan. Within moments, a media blitz ran across virtually all television networks in what could only be…