Posts tagged “politics”

In episode 28 of the Hardcore History Addendum podcast, Dan Carlin discusses how one of the important lessons to be learned from the study of human history is to avoid political extremism like the plague. It seems, though, that — as a species — we are doomed to never learn this lesson, especially since we have extremely recent evidence which shows humans do not even have the capacity to avoid an actual plague like the plague.

A human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only, having much more in common with the bedbug, the tapeworm, the cancer, and the scavengers of the deep sea.
James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

We shall strive for perfection. We shall not achieve it immediately — but we still shall strive. We may make mistakes — but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle.

I remember that my old schoolmaster, Dr. Peabody, said, in days that seemed to us then to be secure and untroubled: “Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights — then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward; that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fourth Inaugural Address
Saturday, January 20, 1945

[W]ith a great moral issue involved, neutrality does not serve righteousness; for to be neutral between right and wrong is to serve wrong.
Theodore Roosevelt – February 22, 1915

The only people who don’t think the entire health insurance system in these United States is irreparably, tragically, insultingly broken are the incredibly healthy and the absurdly wealthy.

Everyone else is screwed, and we know it. And yet nothing changes because the incredibly wealthy make the rules.

Four legs good, two legs better.

Four legs good, two legs better.

What bothers me the most about the recent cyber-hack of the Anthem BlueCross system is not that a company that large and that profitable — one tasked with the care of the most personal data of millions of Americans — did not have adequate security in place to prevent such a thing from happening. That’s

What You Don’t Know About Obamacare Will Surprise You

Obamacare is really, really difficult to understand. So here is a really, really good explanation to help. If you are a person who is alive, you should read it. (And, no, it’s actually not biased! It’s just a straightforward explanation!)

What Is This?

davidgagne.net is the personal weblog of me, David Vincent Gagne. I've been publishing here since 1999, which makes this one of the oldest continuously-updated websites on the Internet.

bartender.live

A few years ago I was trying to determine what cocktails I could make with the alcohol I had at home. I searched the App Store but couldn't find an app that would let me do that, so I built one.

Hemingway

You can read dozens of essays and articles and find hundreds of links to other sites with stories and information about Ernest Hemingway in The Hemingway Collection.