Elaine Coburn – Economics as Ideology: Challenging Expert Political Power

Link to an article by Elaine Coburn:

“Economics as Ideology: Challenging Expert Political Power”

Bonus Links: Economists and the Powerful and The Social Structures of the Economy and “Darwin and the Body Politic: Schäffle, Veblen, and the Shift of Biological Metaphor in Economics”

Jeffrey St. Clair & James Ridgeway – Articles on New West Vigilantes

Links to articles by Jeffrey St. Clair & James Ridgeway:

“On the Firing Line: Bullies in Stetsons”

“The War to Claim the New West”

Bonus Links: “Cattle, Guns, Birds and Boredom: Inside the Oregon Occupation” and  “9th Circuit Blasts Judge Who Ruled for Rancher”

Slavoj Žižek – The Cologne Attacks Were an Obscene Version of Carnival

Link to an article by Slavoj Žižek:

“The Cologne Attacks Were an Obscene Version of Carnival”

Selected quotes:

  • “being a victim at the bottom of the social ladder does not make you some kind of privileged voice of morality and justice.”
  • “This destructive potential of envy is the base of Rousseau’s well-known distinction between egotism, amour-de-soi (that love of the self which is natural), and amour-propre, the perverted preferring of oneself to others in which a person focuses not on achieving a goal, but on destroying the obstacle to it [quoting Rousseau, juge de Jean-Jacques, first dialog] . . . An evil person is thus not an egotist, ‘thinking only about his own interests’. A true egotist is too busy taking care of his own good to have time to cause misfortune to others. The primary vice of a bad person is that he is more preoccupied with others than with himself.”
  • “The difficult lesson of this entire affair is thus that it is not enough to simply give voice to the underdogs the way they are: in order to enact actual emancipation, they have to be educated (by others and by themselves) into their freedom.”

Death Penalty

The death penalty should apply only to those who claim power in the name of others, like world leaders, military and police commanders, and even (sometimes) business executives.  Serial killers and minor criminals are usually pressed by mental health concerns and poverty in a way that makes prison or commitment more appropriate.