soporific perorations
Trawling through the political blogosphere yesterday I came across this piece. The article is a short review of where the author's own particular ideology (conservatism) stands. Don't bother following the link as it will bore you. He did make a few observations I liked and thought applicable to anyone who, like all these political bloggers out there for instance, spends too much energy preaching their worldview.
***
'Man is neither angel nor brute, and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the brute.' In abstract theory was born the Gulag.
Ideology is always wrong because it edits reality and paralyzes thought.
As if by an intrinsic law, when the free market becomes a kind of utopianism it maximizes ordinary human imperfection--here, greed, short views and the resulting barbarism.
Religion is an integral part of ... Western civilization. But this recognition is only manifest in traditional forms of religion--repeat, traditional, or intellectually and institutionally developed, not dependent upon spasms of emotion. Religion not based on a structure of thought always exhibits wild inspired swings and fades in a generation or two.
As a guide, the books, and the results of experience, may be the more difficult way--much more difficult in a given moment than pre-cooked dogma, which is always irresistible to the uneducated.
***
'Man is neither angel nor brute, and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the brute.' In abstract theory was born the Gulag.
Ideology is always wrong because it edits reality and paralyzes thought.
As if by an intrinsic law, when the free market becomes a kind of utopianism it maximizes ordinary human imperfection--here, greed, short views and the resulting barbarism.
Religion is an integral part of ... Western civilization. But this recognition is only manifest in traditional forms of religion--repeat, traditional, or intellectually and institutionally developed, not dependent upon spasms of emotion. Religion not based on a structure of thought always exhibits wild inspired swings and fades in a generation or two.
As a guide, the books, and the results of experience, may be the more difficult way--much more difficult in a given moment than pre-cooked dogma, which is always irresistible to the uneducated.