Category Archives: Politics
Spontaneous Order
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 11th August 2021Everywhere we look we are surrounded by orderly systems that arose spontaneously and continue to operate in the same way. The universe, regardless of how it started, operates according to rules that no matter their complexity are knowable and fixed. The laws of physics are unchangeable; it’s our understanding of them that’s subject to alteration….
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Infrastructure Bill Offers Immortality
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 3rd April 2021[A] man can die but once: we owe God a death… and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next. Shakespeare Henry IV: part 2 An intern working from home for the Lake Charles Courier and Ives Daily has discovered a hitherto neglected passage of the Infrastructure…
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On Corruption
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 22nd February 2021Lord Acton’s famous line about the relationship of power and corruption needs no more than its first phrase. The two are conjoined twins. Under the right circumstances all of us are likely to succumb to the corrosive effect of authority. Some occupations have it as part of their job descriptions. While corruption is ineluctably part…
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Why Nothing is Hardest
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd November 2020Nothing is harder than doing nothing, especially when it’s the best alternative among a pack of difficult choices. Medicine’s prime commandment – Primum non nocere – often requires that the physician refrain from treatment when the remedy is worse than the malady. While the maxim is endlessly preached, it is rarely observed. The urge to…
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Where is Edmund Burke?
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 16th August 2020The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”― Edmund Burke (in a letter addressed to Thomas Mercer). Most have heard Burke’s famous observation about how easy it is to allow evil to prosper. His elaboration on the subject is less well known. His 18th century prose style is all…
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Richard Tucker Foundation Removes Late Tenor’s Son From Its Board
Written by James Drake | 9th August 2020The Richard Tucker Music Foundation, the largest of its kind in the U.S. and the venue for young American singers to compete for the funding and publicity to pursue an operatic career, has come under media scrutiny for a lack of diversity among the winners of its top award. As an apparent first response to…
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On Equality
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 4th August 2020We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal… This self evident truth is obviously not self evident. Thomas Jefferson undoubtedly knew such to be the case. He meant that we all should be equal before the law and that the laws should be designed without bias or special benefit not thought…
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Einstein, Insanity, and Models
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th July 2020“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” This quotation attributed to Einstein, was said by him (if he really said it) in the context of quantum mechanics, where doing the same experiment repeatedly does give different results. But in the macro world the same experiment properly performed does give…
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Coronavirus – From Panic to Reality
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 18th April 2020It is slowly dawning on the world and the US in particular that we are suffering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. We’re on life support. Our economic survival is 50-50, probably worse. How did we get here and where is here? I’ll start with the newest information which should come as no…
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Government Is No Match for the Coronavirus
Written by Robert Luddy | 21st March 2020The coronavirus is reminding everyone that you cannot rely on government and that ultimately it is the private sector that will provide the solutions. Many nonmedical government officials and members of the media are predicting massive cases of COVID-19 and death, when in fact no one can predict the outcome. What we do know is…
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