Conversation of Our Generation

Every time we have a tragedy or catastrophe happen, there are calls to "do something." Often, the "something" we're supposed to do isn't specified. In fact, politicians rarely get specific so we cannot hold them accountable. But, is reactive political action good? Should we continue to react to problems at the surface level or dig into the roots instead? Grayson Quay and I discussed this and much more in this episode.

Here's what we discuss:

Reactive Political Action

When we take political action after a tragedy, we are normally not thinking straight. If emotions are high, we act irrationally, which makes for policy that feels good in the moment, but doesn't fix the issue. Plus, acting quickly can mean we aren't taking into account all of the factors that lead to a problem. National issues rarely can be solved by policy, and can never be solved with a quick piece of legislation.

Better Political Action

Political action that makes sense is proactive. Instead of waiting for a tragedy to respond to, we ought to look for negative trends in our society and the causes. We know we have issues with mass shootings, drugs, mental illness and more, so why don't we respond? We ought to be able to take political action to prevent these problems from getting worse. Furthermore, each of us can play our part in fixing the issues. Don't wait for politicians in Washington D.C. to fix our issues, but solve your own problems as best you can. Politics should be a last resort.

About Grayson Quay

Grayson Quay is a freelance writer based in Arlington, VA. He earned his MA in English literature from Georgetown University in 2019. Grayson's work has been published in The American Conservative, Reason, The National Interest, and the Spectator US. You can find him on Twitter here. Here's the link to the article we discussed.

Find out more here: https://conversationofourgeneration.com/2021/04/05/political-action-and-the-call-to-do-something/(opens in a new tab)

I once heard a teacher tell his students, "If you want to be able to break the rules, you have to know them first." Basically, the point is something similar to Chesterton's fence. Rather than breaking the rules when you don't understand them, you should only remove barriers with a good cause. In Meditations on First Philosophy, Rene Descartes flips the rules of philosophy on their head in this experiment.

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."

Rene Descartes

Know the Rules

Philosophy operates on certain rules and conditions, and it takes a lot to learn them. While I'm no expert, I do think that I know what I don't know. I enjoy philosophy and walking through arguments, but I don't have all the terms and processes down. But, I do see why the rules are in place. They keep the conversation on track and help people know how to "play the game." If two people want to spar or square off, the rules must be established and agreed upon. The framework philosophers have created over the last couple thousand years help us do that in a much more productive way.

Check out the full Library here >>

Different Ways of Breaking the Rules

Now that we know why we have the rules, I want to discuss the ways we break them. Rules can be broken out of ignorance, anger, spite, or for a good cause. So, it's important to know which reason you have to break a rule when you do it.

Here are some different ways people go about it:

Watch or listen and find more content here --> Breaking the Rules of Philosophy show notes 

In this episode, I talked to John Timaeus of Modernity Has Fallen about epistemology, rationality, and the failures of modernity. John writes about these issues on his blog. As a software developer and mathematician, John understands problem solving, and is able to show how we've gone wrong. So, we discussed how in our modern world we don't know how we come to truth. Then, we looked back at how we came to know what is true in the past. Last, we discussed how our extreme problem solving can never run out of problems to solve - and might even create more.

Modernity's Confused Epistomology

Too many people today assert what is true without knowing how they came to know it. Although we can know many facts, we are not good at knowing how we learn or the basis for what is true. We offhandedly discount the supernatural and take materialist assumptions. Many modernists will say that science is the only source of truth, but at same time fail to defend why it should be.

That's our problem: we know a lot of things, but don't know why. Knowing is not only the who, what, when, where, and how. There's a why behind what we know to be true and why we believe something to be true. That is what we use epistemology to understand, and that is something that modern man has lost that the ancient world knew.

Failures of Modernity

Modernity has promised us that we will solve all the world's ills with rationality. We can leave religion behind, trading it in for science. However, that has not come true. In fact, modernity has failed to solve our problems, even creating many more in the process. Because we are finite beings, we cannot know all that goes into our decisions, and so each solution will be ultimately insufficient. Just take the internet for example. It has given us tremendous ability to solve problems through communication, but it has also brought a host of issues with social media, porn, and more.

Find out more about the Failures of Modernity and Pure Rationality here.

Many will argue that Abraham Lincoln was the best president we've had, or at least one of the best. What made Abraham Lincoln great in many people's eyes is the preservation of the union. But was Lincoln a good president? In The Real Lincoln, Thomas DiLorenzo shows the problems with Lincoln's presidency. By taking a look at this book, we'll ask if Lincoln was good or bad for our country by looking at the results of his presidency. You can find more book reviews in the Conversation of Our Generation Library.

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."

Was Lincoln a Good President?

Based on the evidence, I don't think Lincoln was a good president. Although, I'll grant that he came into power during crazy and tumultuous times. But, the greatness of leaders is based on how they rise to that occasion. In what I've seen, I don't think Lincoln was the great president people claim he is. His economic system was a failure that eroded liberty and needed to be forced on the people. Lincoln didn't free the slaves, even the slaves he was able to free. And, he condoned the mass rape, pillaging, and burning of the south, of people he claimed were his fellow countrymen. So no, I don't think Lincoln was our best president. I don't think Lincoln was even a good president.

Want more great book reviews? Check out my library here.

Check out the shownotes for Was Lincoln a Good President here.

What is distributism? I talked to a distributist about how to implement a distributist economic system and why it's best.

I recently sat down with Michael Thomas of Sharon to discuss distributism, and how it's different as an economic system. He is a father, husband, homesteader, and traditional farmer. To find more of his work, you can check out the website for the Brickhouse Farm and Orchard. Michael is also an avid reader, which is how he came across distributism. Also, as a Catholic who believes a distributist economic model is closest to Catholic social teaching, he's interested in sharing this idea more people.

Read more about distributism here

John Locke was an influential Enlightenment thinker whose work inspired many of the Founding Fathers. Locke was a philosopher and is commonly regarded as the Father of Liberalism. Since his work has come up in other discussions, like the one I had with Dr. Yenor. Plus, Locke was a focal point of my conversation with Brooke Medina from the John Locke Foundation. Because he's top of mind, and because we're ready to tear apart anything anyone tries to build in our society, I wanted to discuss Two Treatises on Government to learn how to criticize government.

"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom."

-John Locke

First Treatise: Criticize Government As It Is

In the first treatise, Locke responds to Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, a work in favor of the divine right of kings. During this time there was a lot of political turbulence in England, and a debate was bubbling up about the monarchy. Locke responded to Filmer because of his contention that all men are born slaves of the divinely ordained king. This idea repulsed Locke because he believed each person is capable of reason. Furthermore, each person is capable of understanding and following God's Law.

Second Treatise: Offer a Viable Alternative

The second treatise is a long description of what could replace the British system. He juxtaposes the state of nature and the state of war, saying that people enter into society to avoid a state of war. Then, Locke discusses property rights, explaining why they are a right and how to defend them. After laying out these main principles and observations, he goes on to discuss a suitable form of government.

https://conversationofourgeneration.com/2021/03/18/how-to-criticize-government/

In this episode, I talked to Brook Medina from the John Locke Foundation about defending property rights from government and big tech. But, we also discussed capitalism vs. distributism, John Locke, beauty, and much more. We were able to pack a lot of great insights into this hour-long interview. So, listen or watch below. And, if you want to learn more about the John Locke Foundation, check out their work here.

Brooke Medina is Vice President of Communications for the John Locke Foundation. Brooke also co-hosts HeadLocke and handles all press relationships. She has been published in outlets such as The Hill, Entrepreneur, Washington Examiner, Daily Signal, FEE, and Intellectual Takeout.

In my book on this subject, I discuss how innovation can outpace government regulation if done right. But, the world of big tech censorship is another issue. Brooke and I discussed how political activism can help push back against government and the potential solutions for holding big tech accountable. As advocates of the free market, neither of us wants more government regulation. However, we both recognize the problem and see the need for some solution to hold these big tech companies accountable.

We also dove into the debate I've been seeing several places on capitalism vs. distributism. Again, while we don't want government getting into managing the economy, we both are intrigued by the distributists. Neither of us sees how the distributist model can be implemented. However, new trends on remote work and a dispersion of talent could lead to a similar outcome. Instead of government reassigning wealth or jobs, they may be able to stand aside and let the free market decentralize.

I recent finished Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton, and it was a truly delightful book. Although it might have helped reading it with a scotch and cigar. All joking aside, it was an interesting look at new arguments for Christianity that really spoke to me. As someone who fell away from the faith and returned due to the good arguments faithful Christians and Jews put forward, as well as bad Atheist arguments, I know why I believe what I believe. In this exploration of why Christianity is true, and how Chesterton came to know that, I came across a set of arguments I hadn't heard. And, they only fortified my belief further.

Buy your copy of Orthodoxy here>

His arguments are not ontological proofs or extraordinary miracles he had in his life. Instead, it is is an argument from experience and evidence with a bit of wit mixed in. He demonstrates how many of the problems people raise with Christianity just aren't true. Really, he employs Occam's Razor, or the Sherlock Holmes method: whatever is left after all has been ruled out, must be true. In this discussion I found a new line of argumentation that lead me to see better why Christianity is true, and how the arguments and problems with Christianity fall short of disproving this.

Buy your copy of Orthodoxy here>

I picked up Descartes Discourses after I finished Orthodoxy because there wasn't much left in the book and I had time to read. The two works could not be more different. Chesterton speaks from his experience of the world throughout this work, describing how he came to Christianity through these experiences. He does present the arguments for Christianity and arguments against Christianity that he encountered. However, he doesn't work through them systematically like most philosophers, but organically as a sage might.

The juxtaposition of this approach against Descartes' who seeks to do away with all his experiences and his common sense to find what's true. Instead of rejoicing in this world of oddities and wonders, he seems to turn away from it and shun it. And, both these men are Christian thinkers, which to me shows the beauty of the Catholic Church that allows a healthy diversity in approach to the faith.

Instead of truly educating people, we've used our school system to push out mindless drones. That is not to say that the average person today doesn't know many things that some of the smartest 500 years ago didn't. Rather, we no longer make people earn knowledge. While that's the case for traditional schooling, there are outlets offering true education. Children and young adults are looking to online courses, job trainings, and other alternative modes of education to make an impact.

Knowledge used to be something that was discovered for oneself, rather than spoon-fed by educators. Sure, you may memorize your multiplication tables or dates of historic events. But, much of the knowledge you came to was due to exploration and real learning. This means that you didn't simply know facts, but had a worldview and an epistemology to work with to know what is true.

If we want to truly educate our children, we must find a way to fix this broken system or build a new one. Personally, I think building new would be far more effective. The education system is entrenched and pushing back against reform. The administrations, lawmakers, and teachers unions are not seeking to improve education, but to help teachers get as much as they can from the school system for as little as possible.

Teachers unions are holding the “education” of our country’s children as a hostage, and leveraging that against the taxpayer. And the thing is, they really don’t have any leverage. They aren’t actually providing an education. Rather, they’re instilling a prideful ignorance in our children, and sending them off to be drones of the state.

It has been nearly one year of “15 days to slow the spread,” and it seems like school is permanently, radically altered. And many people are seeing the weakness in our education system. Because COVID made schools worse, these options became much more tenable, and people seem to be happier than they were with “normal schooling” before COVID. Kids are failing more, ADHD diagnoses are up, and the teachers are making impossible demands. This has forced people to look elsewhere.

How do we move forward? What can we do now, in our own lives, to improve our education? Despite the bleak diagnosis, I see two easy changes each of us can make in our mindset and our actions to improve our education.

That’s what I’m providing here. I’m launching the first installment of my new course on the Nichomachean Ethics, which will be a greater part of my course on the Golden Mean. This is just a teaser of what’s to come.

In my previous book reviews on the first two books, I discussed how to take responsibility and know when it's time to fight. Each of those is a great lesson, and I recommend you check those out if you haven't. For this episode, we'll discuss conquering evil and what the fallout is when it's defeated. Both of these are important to understand, and if we're to be successful at driving evil out of our culture, we'll need these lessons. So, either watch this discussion (above) or listen (below).

If we plan on conquering evil, we'll have to be ready to learn from these books and be ready to fight when all seems lost. Despite being backed into a corner on all fronts, the good guys fight on. That's what it takes to win the war: courage, cunning and perseverance.

Once the main battle was one, many of the friends parted ways and went home. Some of the more ancient beings like the elves or Gandalf set sail for a different land. The rest were left behind to live the normal life, the peaceful life. They had rebuilding to do, and some lingering ruffians to clean up, but they knew the battle was won. Now, they had to ensure that this sort of evil wouldn't rise again, which is the hard part.