26. February 2017
The Little People need a fresh, modern version of an American society emphasizing a new set of public values and a new social ethos – collective interest and fairness, a “brain” in government (i. e. rationality in policymaking), enhanced professionalism and trustworthiness in governance, more reliance on science and technology in policymaking, inclusiveness, and a new set of informal institutions which the “little people” operate themselves to pushback upon the elite class.
06. November 2016
The Dalai Lama and Arthur C. Brooks in a op-ed column in the New York Times on November 4, 2016 (http://nyti.ms/2fiQt4h) explain the underlying anger and fear of so many Americans living in the social world. That anger and fear goes beyond mere objective deprivations and exploitation. Human beings need a subjective sense of meaning, of being valued in the social world, and contributing something positive to that world before they die. That sense of meaning and value can mean a lot of different...
01. October 2016
New York Times columnist Roger Cohen articulates why Americans are in an "Age of Distrust."(See link below.) He knows that many Americans see the current system as rigged in favor of a political elite. Their role as participants in a democracy is bogus. The political elite no longer has the trust of the general public but that distrust has evolved now into revulsion and opposition, even if that opposition is irrational and counterproductive. This is true, not only in America, but in much of the...
15. July 2016
New York Times columnist, David Brooks, in his July 15, 2016 column "We Take Care Of Our Own"(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/15/opinion/we-take-care-of-our-own.html?_r=0) analyzes American society has having two competing factions in terms of their attitudes towards their society. There are those who are parochial nationalists and moral particularists and those who are globalists and moral universalists. The first group is parochially tribal and subscribes to a type of us versus them philosophy...