UNR Students for Liberty » The Good of the People

The Good of the People: Words

Barry Belmont — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 21:43:18 +0000

So, Google, with it’s 3 billion or so books cataloged, has given us the ability to track how words have been used throughout the years. Wanting to test a couple pet theories, I stumbled upon the rather remarkable trend in how people think in terms of positive and negative. I leave you to interpret the results.

Love, Hate

Good, Evil

Happy, Sad

Share, Steal

Just some food for thought.

The Good of the People #2

Barry Belmont — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:01:19 +0000

Consider every murder, every rape, every insult, every spit in the eye, every driver cutting off another, every theft, every kid’s ice cream that knocked out of their hands irrecoverably to the ground, every instance of playground bullying, every ass grabbed at work, every act of blackmail, vandalism, slander, libel, in sum, consider every human evil that occurred today.

Add them all together.

I am willing it’s not half the number of doors held open for other people.
It’s not a quarter of the number of kisses shared between lovers.
Not a tenth of the number of hugs shared between family members.

Thesis:
Consider every evil act. Now consider every non-evil act. Which is there more of?

…the Good of the People

Barry Belmont — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 06:42:16 +0000

It has come to my attention — due mostly to near daily confrontation on the matter — that many people disagree with my assertion that most people most of the time in most situations are good, caring, and decent. So much so that much of one’s philosophy about the world can consider the “evil” in the world to be of a negligible amount. Indeed, I admit that one of the pillars of nearly every line of thought to which I subscribe (whether it be scientific, moral, political, economic) relies upon this principle.

To help bolster my point, I’m going to try to post on a somewhat frequent basis, evidence in favor of my position. I acknowledge that the onus is on me to prove that my claim is true. And though technically there is no burden of proof on me to prove the opposite of my position is false (I do not need to prove that people are not bad), often — if but for the lulz — I will.

The Good of the People #1:

To claim that people get their foundational morals from “society” is absurd. To say that a child needs to be told “do not kill the other kids in class” from an adult is ridiculous. To say that we get our sense that cruelty is wrong from The Constitution is tantamount to claiming that we get our sense that two plus two equals four from the pages of textbook on mathematics.

This is just simply and foolishly wrong. Anyone who does not intrinsically feel that killing the other kids in class is wrong or that cruelty towards others is to be avoided is unlikely to learn these things by sitting down and reading what The Founding Fathers had to say.

Put another way, ask yourself this: is the only reason you aren’t out killing little old ladies or burning buildings down simply because you happened to be born into a society where some guys in powdered wigs a long time ago deemed such actions to be “unconstitutional”?