Linkage

[erudito]

Tickling Santa.

Croquet Crochet cuttlefish. Via kirieldp.

Actor Richard Widmark has died.

Bhutan has held its first democratic election: it seems to have been very, well, Bhutanese. More on Bhutan’s move to democracy.

How natural law libertarianism and social contract/utilitarian libertarianism don’t lead you to the same places. Responding to critics

Comments

[fizzyland]

The claim that arab racism predates European racism seems like a logical error. Tribalism and related prejudices are uniform characteristics of any grouping.

Racism

[erudito]

Tribalism and xenophobia are not racism. One only gets racism when societies start interacting with folk of different continent-wide groupings (which is what race is in the context of racism) in a way where the differences are salient for some reason.

So, skin colour did not matter to the Romans because they took slaves from all groups and did not have a universalist ethics. Medieval Christendom did not interact with black Africans or Asians in a systematic way.

I discuss the point here.

Oops

[erudito]

Spelling error fixed.

(But your comment made me laugh lots ...)