The Pivotal Post

Photo: (By NASA Langley Research Center (NASA-LaRC), Edited by Fir0002 Publc Domain) A merica is experiencing something out of the ordinary. As individuals, we should be ready for life to get a lot more uncertain. We must accept and try to understand this place we find ourselves. As citizens each of us has the power to make a difference. This is a time for learning, a time to engage, a time to enter the maelstrom with eyes wide open. What does history reveal about political havoc? Societies fall into chaos with regularity. In China, the Cultural Revolution, a run-away ideology of political purity, swept through the country and tens of millions perished. Conventional wisdom suggests that America was founded by people who understood such dangers and created a system of checks and balances to forestall political disaster. More than two century of tradition have contributed to a rich institutional fabric constituting civil society. America, as is often said, has developed a political...

Anthracite Coal E nergy flows through the natural world through myriads of natural cycles. The sun is the basis for virtually all the biology we know to exist. The web of life begins with the sun's radiant energy converting simple elements to complex molecular strings of carbon, hydrogen and a spattering of other elements.  Life is intrinsically bound to a vast array of cycles of energy and matter.  Some of these cycles can be hundreds of millions of years in duration. Coal is created through the interplay of photosynthesis and geologic forces. Plant life that does not decompose or bur back to its constituent element is buried by erosion and tectonic processes. Coal beds are essentially repositories of stored solar energy. When humans discovered the utility of coal as a fuel, it set in motion a process of energy release, hitherto unseen in the natural world. Later the same occurred with petroleum and natural gas. Anthropomorphic (human-caused) forces now shape this pl...

W e see the political spectrum as a continuum of positions between the left and the right. Libetarianism and Fascism are both considered to be on the right of the political spectrum, though they could not be further apart in their philosophy.  On the other hand,  Nazism and Stalinism are very similar in behavior even though they  are considered on the opposite end of the left/right spectrum.  I n truth, there are many poles to politics, including what is sometimes referred to as statism/anarchism spectrum, loosely defined by how much control the state exerts on society.   All s tates utilize various means of social control.    H ighly statist ideologies, such as  Nazism and Stalinism, share in common their demand for total control... they are totalitarian.  Anarchy has had little expression in the post-war world.  The word  Anarchy evokes chaos and pandemoneum, but as a philosophy it is quite different.  It advocate...

R asmussen Reports found that 26% of Americans think that the president should be able to override the decision of the courts.  Yikes. Our country was designed to function at the behest of civic-minded citizens. Do you know anyone who took civics as a course in college or even as a high school lesson?  If you do, you are probably well in years.  For the most part, we don’t’ teach civic lessons to our children, certainly not in a systematic way.  Why is that?  We can start to untangle this question by looking at why civics became important in the first place.  Prior to the American Revolution there wasn’t much of a need for universal civics.  Rich kids had their tutors and were usually taught about the Divine Rights of Kings.  Poor kids worked the farms if they were lucky and formal education was not in the cards.   Some of those uppity rich kids turned to the philosophy of John Locke and other figures of the “Age of Reason,” whe...

A utomation is part and parcel of the industrial age, but over the course of history the economy has been able to easily outdo those losses by creating new jobs in new industries and services. Industrial labor replaced artisans and in the last half century, service jobs have replaced manufacturing jobs. More and more countries have moved into the post-industrial economy and automation has followed along. G lobalization also contributes to the loss of manufacturing jobs in high wage regions as the work shifts to less developed areas. It also leads to innovation and efficiency as businesses compete in a global market. Many advocates of automation point to the fact that the economy continues to innovate new jobs which more than make up for job losses.  This trend may or may not continue, but the combination of automation and outsourcing have hit many regions hard. I n the US, manufacturing jobs have taken a huge hit and have stabilized for the moment. The place where we will see i...