Monthly Archives: May 2012

Movie of the week: No one but you will free you from slavery.

A free-wheeling anthropological history of the idea of conservatism — the fanatical preservation of the status quo — illustrating why you will not be released from your self-imposed bondage by anyone but your self. In other words, a typically light-hearted … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor! | Leave a comment

Sunday School: The Khan Academy: Learn almost anything for free.

My first exposure to the Khan Academy was a John Stossel video in which a public school teacher was bragging that her students were actually excelling in math, now that she was no longer boring them with her ed-school-cultivated ignorance. … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor! | 4 Comments

The movie of the week — will be delayed until next week.

One of our cats scratched me on the nose about a week ago and I ignored the wound until it turned into impetigo. Consequently, I’m not all that pleasant to gaze upon, just now. I thought about doing an audio-only … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor! | 1 Comment

Which organizations best promote the idea of self-adoration? None of them.

From this week’s videocast, a short discussion of the nature of groups and why they are most fundamentally anti-self, and that a person seeking the benefits of self-adoration must anticipate that most groups will strive to frustrate that objective.

Posted in Splendor! | 6 Comments

Movie of the week: Dead-end teleologies and the organized war on self-adoration. Too dour? Make room on your calendar for Splendorday.

Just a couple of topics this week. The idea of dead-end teleologies is vital I think. If your philosophical claims about human behavior are in conflict with your actual everyday existential behavior, the intellectual error can cascade into a self-destructive … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor! | 1 Comment

Sunday school: Economics in One Lesson — for free.

Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson is a classic of freedom-seeking economic writing. Starting with Frédéric Bastiat’s idea of the seen and the unseen, Hazlitt takes the reader through one economic fallacy after another. It’s a wonderful book, a priceless … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor! | Leave a comment

Free the Earth Seven Billion? FreeTheAnimal.com shows you how.

Richard Nikoley, owner of premier paleo-blog FreeTheAnimal.com, totally gets Man Alive! In consequence, Richard’s review of the book is full of interesting insights. Richard made a Skype video of the two of us talking about the book. I think the … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor! | Leave a comment

Videocast: Exploring the practical possibilities for human liberty in today’s America with Brian Brady.

This is the first of the Skype video interviews I plan to do. In this videocast, I talk with Brian Brady, a California Tea Party activist and Ron Paul supporter, about a wide range of strategies for achieving greater political … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor! | Leave a comment

Why I am betting everything I have that you will be the savior of Western Civilization.

A short clip from this week’s videocast. This segment evangelizes your ego.

Posted in Splendor! | 1 Comment

How strong is academia’s death-grip on the obvious? Stronger than a dog’s jaws clamped onto a chew toy.

There is no subject on earth so obvious that an academic won’t study it — on someone else’s dime, of course. In the weekly videocast a few weeks ago, I mentioned that dogs dream, jokingly suggesting that this could be … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor! | Leave a comment

Movie of the week: My life on Black-13, more on the subjunctive, what’s going on in the East and how to keep the West from collapsing.

This week’s video and podcast are linked below. The headline summarizes the content fairly badly, but that’s your incentive to watch the video, ain’t it? The audio-only version of this video is linked below, or you can find it on … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor! | 1 Comment

Sunday school: Why I read Ibsen.

[I grew up in a grimy little industrial town called Danville, Illinois. It wasn’t until I was four years old that I stumbled onto an atlas and discovered why I had felt so much out of place from the day … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor! | Leave a comment

A parting thought to start the weekend…

If you can’t indulge your self, who can you indulge? It’s not mine. Frank Zappa has it with yourself as one word. But it seems like a fine idea to me, in every respect. I’ll give you the best of … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor! | Leave a comment

Our standing challenges stand unchallenged: If you won’t defend the sovereign self, your enemies win by default.

Jim Klein asks libertarians, conservatives and especially philosophers, Where is Man Alive! wrong? I have posted my own challenges, including this one, still unanswered. Meanwhile, in the world of newspaper news, Paul Ryan cannot run fast enough to get away … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor! | 2 Comments

The world won’t change until people change. If you crave freedom, evangelize egoism.

Money quote: “Five hundred days from today, we could be living in a different world.” This is more from this week’s video/podcast. In this clip, I discuss the idea of evangelizing egoism. Here’s why it matters: The typical libertarian/conservative strategy … Continue reading

Posted in Splendor! | 6 Comments