Speakeasy Ideas

To my friends and others I know personally who are here on Facebook, as well as those I don't know personally who follow this page, I write this morning with a special request:

My birthday is coming up in a couple of days. Yes, I'm a Ta**us. Does it show? ;)

I have a new Substack, "Liberty Lyceum: Zetetic Questions for the Zeitgeist," which includes an explanation of that weird-sounding title.

I am trying to produce at least two or three thoughtful pieces each week, and soon I will use that platform to publish a podcast. I have directed most of my analyses, observations, and philosophic, historical, and economic reflections away from Facebook, toward Substack.

The Substack is getting some attention and traction, so I'd like to add to the momentum.

Here's my birthday request: If you have not yet subscribed to "Liberty Lyceum," will you take a moment and do so? Just follow the link below and add your email address.

You can sign up for no charge, and you have the option to be paying subscriber, too. I appreciate all my subscribers. As you can imagine, I value paying subscribers more because they are showing me they value me enough to pay the humble monthly or annual dues (both are options).

If we could boost the number of subscribers to my Substack, that would be a wonderful birthday present. Please and thank you.

Dr. Krannawitter's Substack | Thomas L. Krannawitter, Ph.D. | Substack Liberty Lyceum: Zetetic Questions for the Zeitgeist. Click to read Dr. Krannawitter's Substack, by Thomas L. Krannawitter, Ph.D., a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

More on the theme of trust and distrust.

I continue to think this is a key subject if there is any hope of turning our United States into anything resembling a nation characterized by free citizens, property rights, and the rule of law.

Am I on to something here? Thoughts?

Distrust: Root of all Regulations The presumption of innocence is one of the great bulwarks for civil liberty. Regulations turn that onto its head: You are presumed guilty until you prove your own innocence in the form of compliance.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-143235367?source=queue

A Model of Education It is radical to suggest, today, perhaps children be taught that they must learn and practice how to be good before they can be happy, rather than teaching them to "be themselves."

Let me know what you think...

Lessons from the Stonewall Riots Examine instances of social upheaval and violence, and you'll usually find intrusive government policies.

I've created a Substack.

It is titled, Liberty Lyceum: Zetetic Questions For The Zeitgeist

(I explain what "zetetic" and "zeitgeist" mean in the newsletter.)

I am still figuring out the Substack platform. I published my first piece a few minutes ago. There are numerous settings I need to figure out and adjust.

More to come.

Please check it out. If you have any constructive criticism (or even criticism that isn't very constructive), please send it my way.

Thomas’s Substack | Thomas L. Krannawitter, Ph.D. | Substack My personal Substack. Click to read Thomas’s Substack, by Thomas L. Krannawitter, Ph.D., a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

Reflections on Thanksgiving …

Thankful for Learning the Lessons of Failure - Speakeasy Ideas We Americans, today, owe much to the failures of the first Pilgrim (and later Puritan) colonists and the willingness of later generations to learn from those failures. DEATH The good news worthy of celebration […]

Random mass public murders in the United States — the purpose of which appears to be to take as many lives as possible in a short spot of time — have been on the rise at least since Columbine, now almost a quarter of a century ago.

These murders of large numbers of strangers — the victims are usually unknown by the assailants — have occurred with increased frequency during a period of time in which the United States of America has become more progressive, and more postmodern, than ever.

More Americans now, than ever before, celebrate “diversity” of skin colors, sexual peccadilloes, and gender “identities.”

They fly their rainbow flags. They announce on their yard signs that they have faith in science and they reject bigotry. They don their Kente cloths and other articles of clothing common in foreign countries and cultures.

More Americans now, than ever before, advocate for nonjudgmentalism, tolerance, and multiculturalism.

More Americans now, than ever before, mock classical ideas as outdated and irrelevant — such as virtue being excellence that requires both choice and practice, and the natural foundation of the family, and the view that the universe is intelligible, purposeful, and governed by a moral law, that the universe is not mere random, meaningless matter and motion.

As more mass public murders continue to happen in our progressive, postmodern nation, many Americans are quick to publish on social media the makes and models of the rifles preferred by select mass murderers in recent years.

And they almost never publish the many kinds of handguns, knives, blunt objects, and other weapons used in lower-profile murders that typically don’t make national news.

It is a strange practice.

These people who appear deeply interested in the rifle choices of certain nihilistic mass murderers seem very uninterested in why increasing numbers of Americans are choosing to murder large numbers of random strangers.

Why do growing numbers of Americans, in the most progressive, postmodern period of our own national history, seem not to value their own life or the lives of other human beings? Why are there so many people today who exist without moral purpose or meaning? Is there a connection between the progressivism and postmodernism that now envelopes us and the growing disregard for human life?

These questions are far more intrinsically important than the question of which makes and models of rifles certain random mass murderers prefer.

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Many Americans — hundreds of millions — value the results of capitalism.

They love their computers and smart phones that are continuously being improved based on market feedback.

They love modern medicine, modern cars, and many other kinds of modern technologies.

Many Americans are excellent capitalists in practice: Inventors, designers, and entrepreneurs, (relatively) secure in their property rights, pursuing their own self-interests by investing time and risking their own capital to create products and services that other people want, need, and appreciate.

Yet, at the same time, we who teach capitalism, and the conditions of freedom necessary for capitalism, are few in numbers.

We are not popular or much in demand, lest there’d be more of us.

We are often viewed as suspect, or worse, by the very fellow citizens who value the results of capitalism. We often are denounced as teachers of evil by people sitting in air-conditioned modern coffee shops, kept healthy by modern medical technologies, and using modern their new, affordable computer or smart phone that has more computing power than a warehouse of computers had only a couple of decades ago.

We live in a modern world in which millions of Americans not only take for granted what they most want and need, many genuinely despise the very processes and the very conditions that produced the things they most want want and need.