How well does Donald Trump measure up to Confucius’s teachings? And how well do we? The answer to both questions is “none of the above.”
Category Social Justice
The basic problem with libertarianism is that it is grounded in an idealized, hypothetical “state of nature” that never in fact existed.
There is no cure, but it can be arrested and controlled.
There are both “good freedoms” and “bad freedoms.” Indeed, in many instances freedom may be viewed as either good or bad, depending on which side you’re on. From an evolutionary and biological perspective, the “First Freedom” is a universal “basic needs guarantee.”
Donald Trump’s Presidency involves a zero-sum game with enormous stakes.
Harmonious societies of all types are governed by an implicit “social contract” – a set of shared social benefits and reciprocal obligations among the various interests and constituencies in a society.
We are at a tipping point as a species, but it is a crisis of our own making and, fortunately, we also have options for how to deal with it. If we follow the proven pathway of innovation, cooperation and producing new synergies, there is every reason to hope that we can make the necessary changes and create a sustainable global society for the long term.
The right to life imposes upon us a life-long mutual obligation to provide for one another’s basic needs.
The heart of the matter for many struggling small cities these days is to produce “exports” – agricultural products, manufactured goods, or services of various kinds – that will bring in sufficient revenues to pay for their needed “imports.”
Democracies, like our garden plants, die when they are not carefully and faithfully nurtured.