A recent Foreign Policy article claimed: "As Beijing prepares to host a high-level summit with the European Union on Thursday, the message from Chinese officials seems to be “No more Mr. Nice Guy.” My question: has China ever been a Mr. Nice Guy to anyone ?? Not to my knowledge. In China, the Greater Good rules, as well as its president (see cartoon). Everyone...
Het aannemen van de motie-Pirie (o.a. Wiki) heeft niet alleen mij verbaasd. Lodewijk Asscher vraagt zich - openlijk - in het Parool af: ‘Is mijn partij nog te vertrouwen?’ Gerdi Verbeet schreef dit: ‘Ik ben diep gekwetst en verbijsterd dat niemand van u ingreep. Of was dit misschien de bedoeling?’ Ik zou kunnen stellen dat de motie-Pirie een kwestie van Linkse...
Onlangs publiceerde de Volkskrant deze email nieuwsbrief: Voorspelling: er komt een kabinet van ‘het midden’. Mijn inziens staat deze "voorspelling" gelijk aan een open deur want er zijn nauwelijks andere opties. Meer interessant was echter deze quote: ‘De linksige mens’ kon zich volgens hem ‘storen aan de gebezigde taal en de hufterigheid’ van het kabinet Schoof....
Last week, the blog title above suddenly entered my mind, including the song below. I think, feel and believe that it captures our current times quite well. Indeed, many people appear to be blinded by ideology. I do wonder, however, why pragmatism is becoming a lost art (eg, source). To a large extent, pragmatism is related to concepts like (i) Machiavellianism (ie,...
On March 1, Scientific American published this article: Many Differences between Liberals and Conservatives May Boil Down to One Belief. That topic caught my immediate interest. My blog title summarizes their article in just one line: Politics is a either a belief in equality or in inequality. It took me a while to digest this article because it uses too many words...
Introduction LO: A recent article in The Independent (see below) has enormous potential consequences. What may be good for one person, may well be bad for all other people. One could even argue it is the opposite of the Greater Good theory. A synonym is utilitarianism, "a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that...
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