Evolving Christian attitudes towards personal and national self-defense

Hattip: The Volokh Conspiracy

The paper starts out in the 19th century and chronicles the Christian Church’s move to the right during the first half of the Twentieth Century, and then its move to the left in the second half. The paper makes the case that the elements of the Church which moved left in the post Korean War America strongly identified with the broader leftist movement in America including sympathy for Palestine, socialism, antipathy towards gun owners, and general pacifism; the paper further suggests that those elements are largely composed of the leadership of the church, and lack the backing of the more conservative laity – one of the reasons for the Evangelical revival.

While this paper has a relatively clear conservative bias, it is quite interesting none the less, both as a brief history of the Church’s political stance over the past century, as well as some of the political movements that are likely to happen in the next decade as a result of pressures internal to the Christian Church.

Evolving Christian attitudes towards personal and national self-defense[pdf]

Light Infantry

At 31 pages, this is a relatively brief overview of what the Light Infantry concept means. The demi-manual is relatively through, covering history, equipment, training, tactics, logistics and some comments on the current state of Light Infantry in the US. The problem is that there is almost no discussion of the underlying reasons why the Light Infantry concept works well. For those people who already know why Light Infantry works well, they won’t need such an overview. For those people who are (rightly) skeptical at being so introduced, the Suggested Reading section in the rear of the paper is a gold mine, certainly worth the time to download the work.

Light Infantry[pdf]

Constitutions, Judicial Review, Moral Rights, and Democracy: Disentangling the Issues

This article doesn’t argue for a particular view. Instead, it seeks to clarify the difference between different choices – between written and unwritten constitutions, etc. This paper has certainly helped me to sharpen my thinking about democracies (representative or otherwise). Highly recommended.

Constitutions, Judicial Review, Moral Rights, and Democracy: Disentangling the Issues

The Diamond Invention

An interesting look into the Diamond industry. The book starts out by examining the operating conditions and procedures of some of the world’s diamond mines. It also talks about the history of diamond mining and about wars that are financed and to a certain extent instigated by the diamond trade. The book finishes off by discussing some of the problems faced by the diamond industry, and how they plan to deal with some of those problems.

One of the most important things I took away from this book was how poor an investment diamonds really are. From the book:

Because of the steep markup on diamonds between the wholesale and retail levels, individuals who buy retail and, ;n[sic] effect, sell wholesale often suffer enormous losses on the transaction.

The Diamond Invention

Catalogue of past TED talks

Amazing. That’s all there is to it. I don’t plan on posting much in the way of video here, but it was too good to pass up.

Catelogue of past TED talks

Unlocking Public Entrepreneurship and Public Economies

Highly recommended. This paper is short, but punchy. The essential claim is that governments can be more effective by pushing authority and responsibility to more local levels, and by allowing said governments to contract out to businesses for a more wide variety of services. This in turn makes government more agile to evolving circumstances, more cost effective and more responsive to the (many times locally varying) will of the people. A great quote from this paper is:

The presumption that locals cannot take care of public sector problems has led to
legislation throughout the world that places responsibility for local public services on
units of government that are very large, frequently lacking the resources to carry out
their assignments, and overwhelmed with what they are assigned to do. One should
stress that this is not the way that Europe developed. Since the eleventh century,
thousands of independent Water Boards were established in the delta of the Rhine River
with their own rules and physical structures, drained the swampy land, and protected the
land from being inundated except during extreme storms (Toonen 1996; Andersen
2001). In Switzerland, alpine peasants devised a variety of private and common property
systems to gain profitable income from an extreme and diverse ecology
(Netting 1981). More than 1000 free cities with their own charters and legal traditions
flourished in Europe during the Middle Ages and were the foundation for modern
constitutional democracies (Berman 1983).

Unlocking Public Entrepreneurship and Public Economies

Coordinating in the Shadow of the Law: Two Contextualized Tests of the Focal Point Theory of Legal Compliance

This paper is not really worth reading – it is many pages, but the point (this is quite intuitive) can be summed like so:

When several people with competing interests, share common interests on certain points of interaction, the interaction to achieve those common interests can be made more efficient (less negotiating, more uniform and widespread standards) by the imposition of a law. It is important to note, that this paper talks purely about the standard setting aspect of the law, and not other, stronger mechanisms for compliance.

Coordinating in the Shadow of the Law: Two Contextualized Tests of the Focal Point Theory of Legal Compliance[pdf]

From Seriatim to Consensus and Back Again: A Theory of Dissent

An interesting paper which delves into both the reasons why the Supreme Court publishes or suppresses dissenting opinions, as well as the history behind the practice. The author advances essentially a realpolitik explanation for the practice of dissent or the lack thereof quite convincingly.

From Seriatim to Consensus and Back Again: A Theory of Dissent[pdf]

A Doll’s House

An amazing play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Set in the Victorian era in the United States, this play discusses the roles of men and women, and other ethical concerns. It ends in a controversial and somewhat ambiguous conclusion. If you are interested in reading a really good play by someone other than Shakespeare, this one is golden. As an added bonus, this play is relatively short; at 70 pages it can be easily digested in a single sitting.

A Doll’s House

The Darth Side

This is an amazing novelette. Written in the voice of Darth Vader, it tracks him through the fourth through the sixth movies in the Star Wars saga. Brilliantly inspired writing, the story is caustic and incisive, while containing a good sprinkling of philosophy that makes this piece much more than a lark. If Lucas had this guy do his script, he would have avoided the travesty of his first three movies. I simply cannot recommend this piece enough – go read it now.

The Darth Side