Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The perfectable man

I've become a real fan of Bill Whittle, especially after his response to Jon Stewart's comment that Truman should be considered a war criminal for dropping the bomb.

He has a new segment out. This one is a little drier, but still very interesting. It's a bit of a history/philosophy lesson, for those who aren't familiar with the history and/or philosophy. (He's presenting ideas discussed by Thomas Sowell in A Conflict of Visions.)

In a nutshell, there are two visions of man. One is that man is flawed but perfectable. With enough work, man can transform himself into something better than what he is now. The other vision is that man is flawed, but he's going to stay that way. All of the baseness that seems to be inherent in man is, well, inherent in man.

What's ironic about these two views is that the former, while superficially a better philosophy as it offers an optimistic view of mankind, has led to far more violence than the latter. Some 100 million people were killed in the 20th century alone in Soviet Russia, communist China, and elsewhere, in the name of creating a better man.

The founders of the United States, on the other hand, held the latter view. They recognized that man was inherently flawed and made no attempt to set up a government dedicated to perfecting him. And as yet, we've not needed to slaughter millions of our own citizens to defend that view.


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