Download Full Content – Printable Pickings
AdamSmith.org notes the anniversary of the publication of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.
… From the Greeks onward, many philosophers had argued that virtue was largely a matter of utility. Actions are good if they are useful to those involved. We praise actions that help people or promote the human community, and condemn those which cause harm. Smith’s innovative view was that morality is not in fact so calculating. Human beings are social creatures, born with a natural empathy (Smith says sympathy) for others. We feel some of the pain, or the happiness, of others. To avoid that empathic pain, we avoid causing distress to others, and condemn those who do. To enjoy that empathic happiness, we actually help others, and praise those who do likewise. …
VDH with a piece that could have been in yesterday’s Pickings.
David Broder takes off after Harry Reid. Like all libs, before criticizing a dem, he must first trash someone from the GOP. No card carrying member of the MSM is allowed to have a stand alone column dumping on a democrat. That just isn’t done. In this case Broder picks on Gonzales. We’ll take ‘em where we can get ‘em.
… Hailed by his staff as “a strong leader who speaks his mind in direct fashion,” Reid is assuredly not a man who misses many opportunities to put his foot in his mouth. In 2005, he attacked Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, as “one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington.”
He called President Bush ” a loser,” then apologized. He said that Bill Frist, then Senate majority leader, had “no institutional integrity” because Frist planned to leave the Senate to fulfill a term-limits pledge. Then he apologized to Frist.
Most of these earlier gaffes were personal, bespeaking a kind of displaced aggressiveness on the part of the onetime amateur boxer. But Reid’s verbal wanderings on the war in Iraq are consequential — not just for his party and the Senate but for the more important question of what happens to U.S. policy in that violent country and to the men and women whose lives are at stake. …
Hugh Hewitt posts on Reid.
Ryan Sager posts on the Court’s look at campaign finance reform.
While on campaign finance and resulting free speech issues, The Institute for Justice today reported on an important decision in Washington state. IJ started as champions of economic liberty, added school choice, and eminent domain, and now are working in areas of free speech.
David Brooks with an interesting Obama interview.
An AdamSmith post indicates how poorly the Brit health service is performing.
John Tierney continues his coverage of the pain doctor’s trial. The jury is now in the 5th day.
Gabriel Schoenfeld, Commentary senior editor, has three great posts at Contentions. He covers Naomi Wolf’s silliness, Yeltsin, and our some of the foolishness in our economy.
While we are on the subject of the USSR—Boris Yeltsin’s death was the subject of one of my posts here yesterday—it is a good moment to remember that one of the very best things about the now defunct Soviet Union was its centrally planned economy. If nothing else, it could be counted on to produce an endless series of amusing anecdotes. In the topsy-turvy world of the five-year plan, factory managers and workers were rewarded not for profits but for maximizing other success indicators, like gross physical output, often with bizarre results.
Nikita Khrushchev famously complained about the immense size and weight of chandeliers. It turned out that workers at a Moscow lamp factory were awarded bonuses for production measured in tons. The chandeliers they produced grew ever heavier until they led to a rash of ceiling collapses.
The United States has a market economy—but we also have a huge government sector, where amusing Soviet-style distortions often creep in. Yesterday’s Washington Post reported on the “Metrochek†program in Washington D.C. …
Perhaps the most important item tonight is news Wal-Mart is creating in-store medical clinics. Carpe Diem has the details.
Village Voice with a great obit for Grambling’s Eddie Robinson.
Because parchment was costly, past writers would erase and reuse. BBC reports on the discoveries from “peeling” back those layers.
Dr Noel said: “There is no more important philosopher in the world than Aristotle. To have early views in the 2nd and 3rd Century AD of Aristotle’s Categories is just fantastic.” “We have one book that contains three texts from the ancient world that are absolutely central to our understanding of mathematics, politics and now philosophy,” he said. “I am at a loss for words at what this book has turned out to be. To make these discoveries in the 21st Century is frankly nutty – it is just so exciting.”