Monthly Shaarli
January, 2025
"The law of equal liberty is the fundamental precept of liberalism and socialism. Stated in various ways by many thinkers, it can be summarized as the view that all individuals must be granted the maximum possible freedom as long as that freedom does not interfere with the freedom of anyone else."
"I’m sure the disinformed and the uninformed were also joined by a large number of misogynists, racists, white supremacists, and Christian nationalists, who truly believe in the program Trump is about to unveil. But a lot of Trump voters just haven’t been paying attention. And that includes a lot of Mormons. I refuse to call them Latter-day Saints, because there is nothing saintly about ignoring everything their religion teaches them, including specific instruction in the D&C about electing “honest men and wise men” and “good men” (D&C 98:10). None of these words describe Trump."
"John Dewey is commonly seen as the liberal philosopher par excellence. But his staunch commitment to democracy put him on a collision course with capitalism."
"You have a culture where you are fifty times more likely to get shot who have somehow convinced themselves that their attitude to guns keep them safer..."
I had to log in to Quora to upvote this one
He got to choose his own fairly unassailable position statements, but I still think Alex did a fantastic job in this.
I missed this back when it was published, but just stumbled on it and it is one of the best of the "leftists actually have guns too" type articles I've read.
Good commentary from Matt Duss, former foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders.
"In defending the militarist status quo, Democrats ceded the anti-war lane to Republicans. As they enter the political wilderness, it’s time to reckon with what they got so wrong"
"The decision not to inform or evacuate nearby civilians about the Trinity test came from the top-down. For Manhattan Project leader Gen. Leslie R. Groves, getting the bomb ready for wartime use in near-total secrecy was crucial and trumped all other considerations. Some Manhattan Project doctors and physicists had attempted to warn Groves and Oppenheimer about the possible exposure risk for surrounding communities"
This is an essay by Jon Trott of Jesus People USA about Jonathon David Brown[1], an audio engineer for Petra (and many other Christian bands), who was a member (and funder) of the KKK and other white identity groups.
The essay goes on to look at some of the racist streams at the heart of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity; it is long, but worth a skim.
Thomas Spence (2 July [O.S. 21 June] 1750 – 8 September 1814) was an English Radical and advocate of the common ownership of land and a democratic equality of the sexes. Spence was one of the leading revolutionaries of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was born in poverty and died the same way, after long periods of imprisonment, in 1814.