Matthew Royal > Recent Status Updates

The Nazis asserted that so-called "scum of the earth," like Jews or other "stateless peoples" had no protections -- were "less than" humans -- because membership in a nation state is what grants rights. This directly conflicts with the idea of unalienable human rights. It's startling because that is the idea implicitly accepted in the US when we talk about suspected terrorists at Gitmo and illegal immigrants.

Dang it... now I need to read Hobbes to understand the underlying philosophy behind the state that needs to expand in order to remain stable. Much like how the more I read, the more I learn that I need to read.

Comprehensive historical review of the roots of antisemitism. There's a lot of interesting stuff here about why some people were paranoid about the Rothschild family controlling things behind the scenes. Long story short: people can't imagine others having different motivations than themselves.

So far, I'm enjoying this book much more than the first few episodes of "The Expanse" television show.

“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.” And right now it would happen if you thought there was a thing called a father, and a thing called a mother, and a thing called a daughter, and a thing called a cottage, and told yourself that if you put them all together you had a thing called a happy family.

So far, this book is awful. It's written like a television screenplay -- no character depth, artificial plot. If it weren't my gym audiobook, I'd stop reading -- I'm anticipating giving this 2 stars. Let's see if A.G. has some tricks up his/her sleeve.

I thought I was starting a science fiction book, but this story touches on religious extremism, totalitarianism, and women's rights. Long, but good setup; looking forward to figuring out what the "tale" is about.

"War is the health of the State."

"In this way, a war between rulers was converted into a war between peoples, with each people coming to the defense of its rulers in the erroneous belief that the rulers were defending them. This device of “nationalism” has only been successful, in Western civilization, in recent centuries; it was not too long ago that the mass of subjects regarded wars as irrelevant battles between various sets of nobles."

"Man has found that, through the process of voluntary, mutual exchange, the productivity and hence, the living standards of all participants in exchange may increase enormously. The only "natural" course for man to survive and to attain wealth, therefore, is by using his mind and energy to engage in the production-and-exchange process."

"It was necessary only to make a special notation against the names of those friends one wished to greet on their birthdays or other anniversaries, and the household computer would do the rest....And even though the recipient might shrewdly suspect that the warm words on his screen were entirely due to electronics--the nominal sender not having thought of him for years--the gesture was nevertheless welcome."