Stuff You're Too Busy to Read

Recent current events with the Virginia Governor Northam demonstrates how quickly politicians and interest groups shame and denounce a person in the public eye. Why? I believe voting blocks is part of the answer. However, the more interesting question to me is how can we allow for a path to redemption knowing that every one in politics is a human being? My answer = follow the pattern of financial credit scores.

Every Constitutional right has restrictions. However, the recent abortion bill proposed (Women's Health Protection Act) and cosponsored by several 2020 Democratic US Presidential hopefuls wants to eliminate all state "restrictions" on abortion. This will have devastating consequences for women who will believe that there is no consequence to making this decision. We need to treat abortion like all the other Constitutional rights and require restrictions that only have the effect of making women stop and think about their choice.

This is *not* a judgment, but an observation from "outside the Beltway" for why the temperature of "the left" continues to rise when political outcomes do not go their way. It all boils down to how "the left" tries to create their Utopian society which revolves around how to make those laws. I take information from recent articles, books and Supreme Court cases to show the role of Plato's "noble lies" in trying to legislate through the Executive and Judicial Branches.

Why does is it seem like there is sudden rage against civil war statues? What can we learn from the "Arab Spring" that can help prevent statutes from producing an "American Fall"? Peruvian economist, Hernando De Soto, and American economist Nicholas Eberstadt help to shed a much needed light on a huge factor in both situations = employment or lack their of. What does any society look like that has millions of prime age men not working?

What the Congress can learn from Leonard Susskind's book "The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics". "Thought Experiments" can produce ideas that clash with deeply held principles. Instead of shunning this, it is the lifeblood of physics as it allows people to discover solutions and answers that they would not have thought about if there was no "clash".

Logic is so much better than emotion, right? Neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio challenges the idea that reason is separated or detached from emotion in his book, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Can we really know without feeling?

When we can understand the opposing viewpoint, it is much easier to take them seriously and sincerely. It seems that the root of people being disagreeable in political and social discussions comes from the idea that the opposing viewpoint is disingenuous or dishonest in their arguments in order to get their way. Economist and Historian, Thomas Sowell wrote a book discussing this very point that helped me view opposing viewpoints differently. We can learn to disagree without being disagreeable. Understanding their "vision" is a great start!