Category Archives: government
Polybius and Government
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 17th July 2024Edward Gibbon wrote, “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” His great predecessor the Greek historian Polybius (c. 200 – c.118 BC) seems on close analysis by the reader to have believed that history was little more than the register of different people doing the same things over…
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Making Life Better
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 6th July 2024Those passionate about improving things but without the wit to do it are the most dangerous humans on the planet. One sees this everywhere. Its most virulent form is the complex system. Solitary pursuits are the least affected. Those most committed to improving whatever slice of life has seized their attention invariably turn to the…
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Jefferson and the Tree of Liberty
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 8th June 2024In 1787 the new US Constitution had just been constructed. William Stephens Smith the son-in-law of John Adams sent Jefferson a copy. Jefferson was minister to France and was in Paris at the time. The letter he wrote thanked Smith for sending him the document which he had not received by the time of the…
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A Crook in Crook’s Clothing
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 4th March 2024The title above eventually is apropos of any politician or legislator given a sufficient interval. But it doesn’t stop there. It spreads like the pox to anyone with even a whiff of authority. There’s a gene on chromosome 17, SKNK23a, that’s expressed in early childhood in all humans and amplified by experience that manifests the…
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Essential Services
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 11th February 2024A financial writer recently mused over the complexities of Jerome Powell’s job as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He focused on the problem of interest rates. Lower them too rapidly and inflation may recur or worsen. Keep them high for too long and consumers will be priced out of the loan market and even worse…
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Social Justice Fallacies – Book Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 4th December 2023I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy. Richard Feynman Thomas Sowell has been one of America’s greatest public intellectuals for over a half-century. During that span, he has published 48 books. His latest, written at age 93, is Social Justice Fallacies. He didn’t start life behind…
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Capital Punishment
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 3rd October 2023Jake Hegee’s opera Dead Man Walking opened the Met Opera’s new season last week. It’s based on a book of the same name by Sister Helen Prejean. Sister Helen is an ardent opponent of the death penalty. Though opposition to capital punishment is not a feature of Hegee’s opera its depiction of it and Sister…
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Novak Djokovic For CDC Director
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 17th September 2023As anyone semi-sentient knows the great Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic has won more Grand Slam tennis tournaments than any male player in history. He might have won two more had he not been denied entry to Australia and the US last year because he refused to take the COVID vaccine and thus was unable…
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The NAS Report on COVID-19
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 18th July 2023The National Association of Scholars has released a report Shifting Sands: The Confounded Errors of Public Health Policy Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the third report of a series which examines the interface of science and government. The realization that science, medicine, the government, and both the professional and lay media performed badly during the…
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Transgender Care and the JAMA
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 25th May 2023The Journal of the American Medical Association already on a woke high of intergalactic dimensions has published Standards of Care for Transgender and Gender Diverse People – its full text is below. The document’s contents would until a short time ago have been considered delusional. I don’t wish to discuss the subject beyond saying that…
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