Free Republic

We’ve been hearing a lot of talk recently about reparations, the idea that certain demographic groups in Western countries (but especially the USA) “owe” other demographic groups because of past injustices, whether real or imagined. Typically this talk is cast in racial tones – whites owe racial minorities for oppression, despite whites taking the historically unprecedented steps of abolishing formal slavery, granting minorities “civil rights,” and allowing minorities the opportunity to participate fully in their societies – something that virtually no other group of people in history have done. There has been a low level of background noise along this...

Transformers: Genesis actually. Years ago I was reading philosophy and watching daytime cartoons and out of this unlikely combination I told myself a story as an effort to explore the concepts I was reading about. As a result, this is not your average fanfic. It is set a long, looooong time ago in Cybertron's Golden Age. There are absolutely NO humans mentioned (except in the forward, which briefly speculates on if South Park's creators had made the old Transformers show). Expect to be entertained and maybe even challenged. The worst you can say is it was worth everything you paid...

     Leszek Kolakowski & the anatomy of totalitarianism by Roger Kimball    It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way.—Marx to Engels, 1857What socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything.—V. I. Lenin, 1917Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.—Pascal, Pensées Born in Radom, in eastern Poland, in 1927, the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski is closing in on his eightieth year. He has...