Spinoza was one of the so-called continental rationalists, along with Descartes, Leibniz and others less often read today.
As suggested by Einstein at left, he had a distinctly nontraditional view of God, which got him in a great deal of trouble in the 17th Century Netherlands.
Chris Hedges is an American journalist, author, commentator and Presbyterian minister.
The observation he makes here is shared by a great number of Americans, and by people all around the world who simply wish we could remove some of the insanity from our civilization.
In the United States we have the hate and stupidity that is Trumpism, but many regions around the world are deeply troubled as well.
One of Donald Trump‘s last acts in office was to pardon Steve Bannon for running off with the wall money, meaning Bannon’s scheme to rip off thousands of gullible MAGA folks by getting them to chip into a fund to build the wall on the southern border, only to then steal the money.
If this is the type of bald-faced criminality that you’d like to see at the helm of our country, you’ll love the next four years.
Incredibly low unemployment, record profits and stock prices, the Fed cutting interest rates due to falling inflation. Our portfolios are going through the roof.
Obviously, anything can happen at any time, but “what this economy is going through” doesn’t exactly suck.
Let’s think about the point made at left for a second.
What’s the most important difference between the lawn-game industry and the manufacturers of firearms that are intended to be weapons of war? Answer: Billions upon billions of dollars in profits, and tens of thousands of lobbyists, swarming all over our lawmakers.
When huge amounts of money are at stake, it’s only the liberals who count the dead bodies of our children.
News flash: Schools teach neither patriotism nor “trendy ideologies.”
IMO, if a particular teacher wanted to make a point on the subject here, it should be that the use of the U.S. military should be severely limited, so as to minimize the number of our children who are killed or maimed in combat.
At left is something that has been said by many of the worlds greatest minds, from Socrates to Bertrand Russell.
It’s interesting to note that religious cults try to cultivate certainty in their members. In many cases, questioning the ideas of the leader leads directly to expulsion.
There are many ways of explaining why healthcare should not be a profit-making enterprise, but this one from film documentarian Michael Moore seems especially on-point.
As Ben Franklin observed in the 18th Century, ignorance imposes huge costs on society in many different forms. Sure, crime is among them, but take a look at what just happened here in the U.S. in November.
The most poorly schooled among us teamed up with people with no moral education to elect a man who is under indictment for trying to overthrow the federal government.
Educated people voted overwhelmingly against Trump, but we were no match.
In terms of cost, just wait to see the actual price tag of the Trump administration’s Project 2025. In particular, the cost of cleaning up the long-term environmental damage wreaked by massive amounts of environmental deregulation is going to be hard to fathom.