A Quote by Nathan Myhrvold
The reason societies with democratic governments are better places to live in than their alternatives isn't because of some goodness intrinsic to democracy, but because its hopeless inefficiency helps blunt the basic potential for evil.
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Basic would never have surfaced because there was always a language better than Basic for that purpose. That language was Joss, which predated Basic and was beautiful. But Basic happened to be on a GE timesharing system that was done by Dartmouth, and when GE decided to franchise that, it started spreading Basic around just because it was there, not because it had any intrinsic merits whatsoever.
Democracy suits Europeans today partly because it is associated with the triumph of capitalism and partly because it involves less commitment or intrusion into their lives than any of the alternatives. Europeans accept democracy because they no longer believe in politics. It is for this reason that we find both high levels of support for democracy in cross-national opinion polls and high rates of political apathy.
The moral case is, people say, "Oh they're not ready for democracy," but that's something someone who lives in a democracy would say about someone who doesn't live in a democracy. Well, if democracy is the highest form of human potential, then it can't be true for us and not for them. But, the practical case is democracies don't invade their neighbors. Democracies don't traffic in child soldiers. Democracies don't harbor terrorists as a state policy. So there's a reason to have more democratic states.
To my mind, there is a solution which has to do with democracy, because democratic governments are subject to the will of the people. So, if the people will it, you can actually create international institutions through the democratic states.
The arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect; they outlive governments and creeds and the societies, even the very civilization that produced them. They cannot be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the only reality. They are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away.
The truths of the Judaic-Christian tradition, are infinitely precious, not only, as I believe, because they are true, but also because they provide the moral impulse which alone can lead to that peace, in the true meaning of the word, for which we all long. .?.?. There is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves.
Because of cyberattacks and fake news, we can already imagine the problem all democratic societies will face in future elections: how to limit lies when they threaten democracy?
The democratic ideal has always been related to a moderate level of inequality. I think one big reason why electoral democracy flourished in 19th century America better than 19th century Europe is because you had more equal distribution of wealth in America.
Democratic societies can no longer give religious fanatics a free hand to abuse and murder non believers. Such action betrays contempt for the basic human rights which animate any democracy with meaning.
Bosses are no more inevitable in state and local governments than dictators are in national governments. They will arise and prosper, nevertheless, if true believers of democracy - citizens devoted to the democratic ideals - do not constantly oppose them.
Democracy in Iraq will be an example that the Arab population will look to with great interest. And some Arab governments are concerned about democracy in Iraq, not because Iraq will be an aggressive state against them, but rather by the example that will be set by a successful federal democratic state in Iraq.
Up until today evil has lured goodness into evil, but goodness has not been able to lure evil into goodness. This may be the reason why up to today Christianity has not been able to boldly fulfill the Will of God.
The world would hate His followers, not because of evil in their lives, but precisely because of the absence of evil or rather their goodness. Goodness does not cause hatred, but it gives occasion for hatred to manifest itself. The holier and purer a life, the more it would attract malignity and hate. Mediocrity alone survives.
The model is just one element of the photograph. There's also the location, the light - all that junk. It helps if the girl is really good-looking, but a girl can be not super good-looking and it'd still be a really good photograph. I ask people to send some photos of where they live if that's where I'm shooting. I go for shabby places over too-nice places, because most of these girls are going to look better if they're not made to look rich.
There's a reason you can learn from everything: you have basic wisdom, basic intelligence, and basic goodness.
Governments are based pincipally on force and deception. Democratic governments are based chiefly on deception, other governments on force. And democratic governments, if you get too uppity, give up on the deception and resort to brute force, as a lot of us found out in the sixites. Those who didn't find out in the sixites will find out in the near future because we're going to have a rerun.
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