Zinnlandia
Posted on | July 3, 2009 | by Aschwin de Wolf
A recent blog post by Chip Smith at the Hoover Hog drew my attention to the writer Takuan Seiyo. In the archives of the author at the Brussels Journal I found a 2008 piece on the pathological political culture of the Pacific Northwest, or as the author calls it, Zinnlandia:
Behavioral psychology has names for various information perception and analysis biases, but at least fifteen of those would have to be added to encompass the depth and width of the Zinnlandian’s – let’s not beat around the bush – craziness. Take, among others, the Bias Blind Spot, add some Omission Bias and Selective Perception, leaven with white racial guilt propaganda. Whip that into a mixture of Belief Bias, Selective Memory, Bandwagon Effect, Déformation Professionnelle and Disconfirmation Bias. Pour the mixture into a pie shell made of Neglect of Probability, My Side Bias, Optimism Bias and Positive Outcome Bias, and bake for 30 years in an oven designed specifically by mainstream media and the educational system to make that kind of dough rise. Voilà!
Portland, Oregon is one of the most beautiful cities in the United States but the cultural marxism and economic illiteracy (producing astronomical unemployment rates, among other things) that informs public policy here reflect a self-congratulatory obsession with planning and a bias against realism and common sense which the philosopher Michael Levin identifies as the “skim milk fallacy” in his penetrating analysis of progressive thinking, How Philosophical Errors Impede Freedom (PDF).
Tags: Howard Zinn > Michael Levin > Oregon > Pacific Northwest > Portland > Takuan Seiyo
Rudolf Carnap politicized
Posted on | July 2, 2009 | by Aschwin de Wolf
It is a welcome development that there is an increasing interest in the history and substance of logical positivism (or logical empiricism). Most of this literature, however, is produced [...] Continue Reading…
Tags: A.W. Carus > Gustav Landauer > Hans Reichenbach > Jürgen Habermas > John Rawls > Karl Popper > Logical Empiricism > Logical Positivism > Rudolf Carnap
Animal spirits in public policy
Posted on | June 14, 2009 | by Aschwin de Wolf
In the Summer 2009 issue of the Independent Review, Arnold Kling reviews George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller’s new book Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, [...] Continue Reading…
Tags: Arnold Kling > Behavioral Economics > Behavioral Finance > Bryan Caplan > George Akerlof > Public Choice > Robert Shiller
Unfalsifiable achievements
Posted on | June 12, 2009 | by Aschwin de Wolf
William McGurn writes in the Wall Street Journal:
“Saved or created” has become the signature phrase for Barack Obama as he describes what his stimulus is doing for American [...] Continue Reading…
Tags: Barack Obama > Economics > Falsifability > Karl Popper > Politics > Unemployment
Macroeconomics in politics
Posted on | June 11, 2009 | by Aschwin de Wolf
Steve Chapman writes:
If the economy improves and unemployment drops, Obama can take credit. If it fails to improve and unemployment rises, though, he can say he averted an even [...] Continue Reading…
Tags: Epistemology > Macroeconomics > Paul Krugman > Scientific Reasoning > Steve Chapman
The destruction of self-help by state intervention
Posted on | June 6, 2009 | by Aschwin de Wolf
The Independent Institute’s quarterly Independent Review is a worthy publication. The journal produces well researched and innovative scholarly articles in the classical liberal tradition, avoiding excessive emphasis on “public [...] Continue Reading…
Tags: Austrian Economics > Health Insurance > Indepdent Insitute > Independent Review > Lukáš Dvořák > Pavel Chalupníček > Public Goods > Public Policy Libertarianism > Welfare State
Political classification and economic reductionism
Posted on | June 2, 2009 | by Aschwin de Wolf
At Taki’s Magazine E. Christian Kopf writes:
As conservatives and right-wingers like Oswald Spengler, Julius Evola, Whittaker Chambers and many others have pointed out for over a century, free marketeers [...] Continue Reading…
Tags: Anthony de Jasay > E. Christian Kopf > Julius Evola > Liberalism > Oswald Spengler > Positivism > Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Sowell on the poisonous doctrine of ‘empathy’
Posted on | May 27, 2009 | by Aschwin de Wolf
Thomas Sowell writes:
If you were going to have open-heart surgery, would you want to be operated on by a surgeon who was chosen because he had to struggle to [...] Continue Reading…
Counter-modernism
Posted on | May 26, 2009 | by Aschwin de Wolf
In my review of Jonathan Bowden’s book Mad I discussed the possibility of “a unique and coherent Nietzschean/Lovecraftian worldview that is strictly positivist in its epistemology, and distinctly reactionary [...] Continue Reading…
Tags: Anti-Modernism > Counter-Modernism > GRECE > Martin Heidegger > New Right > Sam Francis
Jonathan Bowden’s Mad
Posted on | May 25, 2009 | by Aschwin de Wolf
From the publisher who brought us a new and expanded edition of L.A. Rollins’ excellent “The Myth of Natural Rights” comes a rare little book by Jonathan Bowden called [...] Continue Reading…
Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche > H.P. Lovecraft > Jonathan Bowden > Julius Evola > Kerry Bolton > Logical Positivism > Mad > Max Stirner > New Right > Nine-Banded Books > Reactionary > The Conservative
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