EP #33 | Young People’s Socialism
Where are young socialists in their thinking? What expressions of socialism are meeting their mark rhetorically? What does socialism mean to them and what values do they think socialism is advocating?
Read MoreProf. Stephan Hicks
EP #32 | Bootleggers and Baptists or Snowflakes
A generation ago the slogan of campus activist was, speak truth to power. Why has there been such a dramatic change in just one generation?
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EP #31 | Hazony Attacks the Enlightenment
On December 30th 2019, the YouTube channel Prager University released a video narrated by bible scholar and political theorist Yoram Hazony discussing the Enlightenment. Hazony makes eight major claims about the Enlightenment and while there are some thoughtful arguments against the Enlightenment, Hazony has not made them. In this episode of Open College, Dr. Hicks points out the flaws in Hazony’s augments and shows why this video is an example of special-pleading history.
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#29 War on Socialism
William James was a leading American philosopher who lived at the turn of the 20th century. In his essay the Moral Equivalent of War, James describes himself as a socialist and pacifist and is very disgusted with the human history of war and is looking for a solution. This essay, while thoughtful and well argued is to my mind, highly objectionable. Here is why.
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EP #28 | Keynes Blame
Is Keynes to blame for everything? John Maynard Keynes was the most influential economist of the 20th century. In the 21st century his theories are institutionalized. But how close is current Keyesnian practice to original Keynesian theory?
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#27 Money You Should Love
Money is one of the greatest inventions ever, just as books are one of the greatest inventions ever and for the same reasons. Books are collections of abstract symbols that represent abstract ideas. Writing enhances our thinking through portability, storage, precision and universality. Books enable everyone to communicate with one another. All of these points about books hold precisely for money.
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#24 Does Power Corrupt?
Lord Acton said, “absolute power corrupts absolutely” but is this accurate? Abuses of social and political power are the ones we worry about the most. Social science data does seem too, on the surface, bare out Lord Acton’s claims. However, if you correlate the degrees of corruption with degrees of centralization the data suggests things are not quite so simple.
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EP #23 – Is Postmodernism Neo-Marxist? Yes, No & Sort Of.
Professor Jordan B. Peterson is perhaps most famous for the neo-Marxist label “Postmodern Neo-Marxism.” Although Dr. Peterson recommends Explaining Postmodernism by Dr. Hicks, their analysis on this issue differs in some important ways.
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EP #22 | Did Coffee Give Us The Enlightenment
As a contributing factor, coffee (and tea) certainly gets credit on physiological grounds. Also contributing was the development of European coffee house culture, the coffee houses bringing businessmen, artists, and scientists together for drinking and socializing.
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EP #20 | Sex Dolls: Why Not?
Sex Dolls, Artificial Intelligence, and the Real Thing. Newly-engineered materials and robotics have made the physical experiences closer to the real thing, and artificial intelligence has enabled robots to respond verbally and non-verbally more realistically. let’s set aside the politics and focus on the ethics: Is sex with robots a good thing? a bad thing?
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