Jerry Kirkpatrick's Blog, page 5

The Meaning of Justice

The challenge of defining justice is that it is both a moral and a legal concept. Reason, courage, integrity, and independence, for example, are moral values with no direct legal counterpart. They each are, to use Ayn Rand’s succinct definition (p. 15), a “that which one acts to gain and/or keep” and derive from the fundamental standard of human life as a rational being. Reason therefore is the

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What Americans Need to Learn about the Left

A retired English professor from Emory University recently wrote: “Stop wasting your time yelling, ‘Hypocrisy!’ Don’t bother pointing out the contradiction. They don’t care. Consistency is not a liberal virtue. Only the outcomes matter.” Instead of “liberal” virtue, a more correct designation would be “progressive,” as in “far left progressive” virtue. Liberals are still around who think of

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The Benevolence of Advertising

[After a delay this month dueling with a medical monster (whom I believe I have defeated), I decided to dig into my archives for the current post. It is the final chapter of my 1994 book In Defense of Advertising. The chapter’s title is similar to one used by George Reisman in some of his writing. I highly recommend not just Dr. Reisman’s magnum opus Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (esp. pp.

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Personality and Style versus Honesty and Justice

Here is a statement sometimes heard, sometimes vociferously: “I can’t stand that person’s personality or style.” The person referenced might by a client, a coworker, a relative—or a former US president. Is the person referred to immoral? That is, dishonest or unjust?  Sometimes an elaboration follows about a business or personal relationship: “It’s a personality conflict. We just clash too much

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On the Separation of Church, Science, Education, and Business from the State: Avoiding Repressive Fascism

A suggested revision of the First Amendment of the US Constitution: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, scientific research, education, or business activity, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.When the state meddles, bad things happen—besides violating our rights. The origin of the notion of a dividing line between church and state, or more correctly, “a

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Science and Great Experiments: The Search for Universals

The 1981 book Great Scientific Experiments by Rom Harré presents in popular format and in only 200 pages the gist of twenty influential scientific experiments, from Aristotle to the twentieth century.Interestingly, none of the experiments cited uses statistical samples of any size divided into experimental and control groups. All samples are small and one is a sample of one! How is this possible?

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Mass Psychological Conformity

Thinking about our current covid totalitarianism, columnist Roger Simon recently wrote:What we have witnessed throughout the world [today] is millions, really billions, of people taking orders without thinking or, in the majority of cases, even seriously investigating what they have been told.Simon states that witnessing this has helped him answer his long-held question (also held by many,

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How Not to Jump to Conclusions When Judging Business People and Situations

Over the years, I have written a few posts discussing the issue of judging other people (1, 2, 3). Applying ethical principles to make moral judgments in business is particularly challenging, requiring much research and sorting before making a decision. Taking time to process the acquired data is necessary to avoid making unsound decisions.There are three overlapping steps in the process:

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Censorship—Direct and “Pre-"

Although censorship is always a government action, it does not always occur through an official “ministry of truth” or “department of truth and social justice.” Free speech dies in many ways and the ways all support one another. I addressed the process in two previous posts (1, 2) and called some of the ways “pre-censorship,” meaning they are not explicitly or directly actions of the

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My Body, My Choice—Her Body, Her Choice. Same Principle

Principles are universal and provide causal explanations and guidance to human action.Examples from an earlier post, with appropriate qualifications, included water boiling at 212 degrees Fahrenheit at sea level, and never lying in human relationships. The former is a causal explanation with implicit guidance to adjust cooking temperatures at higher altitudes and the latter is moral guidance with

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