Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Assault of Thoughts - 5/26/2010 - Special "Time" Edition

"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking" -JMK

- The David Brooks column I shared this morning contrasted Burke with Paine, and highlighted Paine's advocacy for wiping the legislative slate clean every thirty years so that the past could not tyrannize over the future. That seems to be a reference Paine's Agrarian Justice. This, of course, is very similar to Jefferson's speculation on that sort of plan, which I talk about in more detail in this blog post.

- Andrew Sullivan shares research about the way we experience time as we age. This research finds that contrary to the canonical understanding of aging and time, people may not actually feel time move faster as they age.

- This New York Times article about elderly black farmers who are dying before they can receive benefits from court victory over discrimination in argicultural credit raises some important questions about the implications of time and mortality for reliance on tort law. Mr. Boyd, a Virginia farmer, remarks that "They deserve the money before they leave God’s earth".

- Legal Theory Blog writes about what it calls the temporal imperialism of the Supreme Court

- Triablogue on time, responsibility, and God.

2 comments:

  1. Note - when the last link discusses "libertarianism", its a reference to a type of ethics, not the political philosophy that gets commonly discussed on here.

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  2. Yeah, that's the first historical use of the term; though free will is something that most political libertarians probably believe in. Something of a natural fit. Could be wrong though; never really discussed the issue with many libertarians. Those I have advocated some kind of free will.

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