Liberalism as politics for a race of devils – Opinion – ABC Religion & Ethics. For liberalism, at least in its radical form, the desire to subject people to an ethical ideal - which is regarded as universal and thus universally binding - is the mother of all crimes, "the crime which contains all crimes," for it amounts to the brutal imposition of one's own view onto others, and is thus the root cause of civil disorder.
This is why, liberals claim, if one wants to establish civil peace and tolerance, the first pre-condition is to get rid of any moral temptation: politics should be thoroughly purged of moral ideals and rendered "realistic," taking people as they are, counting on their true nature, not on moral exhortations. The paradigm here, in many ways, is the way that the market operates: human nature is egotistic and there is no way to change it, so what is needed is a mechanism that would make private vices work for common good.
In his famous essay on "Perpetual Peace," Immanuel Kant provided a precise formulation of this key mechanism:
Ian Fraser: The Economist Loses the Plot With This Shallow, Pro-City Propaganda. By Ian Fraser, a financial journalist who blogs at his web site and at qfinance.
His Twitter is @ian_fraser. I was surprised and disappointed when I opened my copy of The Economist on Friday morning. The magazine is running a feebly-argued propaganda piece headlined “Save the City” as its cover story. The piece vaunts the “skills” that are to be found in the City of London and seeks to persuade us that having a powerful financial sector is critical to the future health of the UK economy and that the “Square Mile” must therefore be cherished and preserved at all costs. The cover image harps back to the Blitz, as if Hitler’s Lufwaffe is once again poised to carpet bomb a key part of our heritage. Outside PR puff sheets like HBOS’s absurd “Deal Leaders” of 2005-08 and the Pravda-style advertorials inserted into newspapers and magazines to launder the images of evil dictatorships, I’ve rarely read such a farcical or misleading article.
Who wrote this garbage I wonder? Hyperoglyphics:- ZUBq9o3Lo5. Wall Street, investment bankers, and social good. A few months ago, I came across an announcement that Citigroup, the parent company of Citibank, was to be honored, along with its chief executive, Vikram Pandit, for “Advancing the Field of Asset Building in America.”
This seemed akin to, say, saluting BP for services to the environment or praising Facebook for its commitment to privacy. During the past decade, Citi has become synonymous with financial misjudgment, reckless lending, and gargantuan losses: what might be termed asset denuding rather than asset building. In late 2008, the sprawling firm might well have collapsed but for a government bailout. Even today the U.S. taxpayer is Citigroup’s largest shareholder. The award ceremony took place on September 23rd in Washington, D.C., where the Corporation for Enterprise Development, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to expanding economic opportunities for low-income families and communities, was holding its biennial conference. There is something in what Mack says. Les ruines du modèle social Français.