The sad thing is that there's so much to criticize in this administration's foreign policy (e.g. illegal wars in Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, parts of Africa and the destabilization these wars cause, scandalous spying on our allies, etc.). The problem is that, with exceedingly few exceptions, prominent Republicans have no credibility to criticize the President on these issues. If anything, the old Republican establishment's complaint tends to be that the President was not aggressive enough in involving us in illegal wars. Because of this, they like their former presidential nominee have to inflate or even fabricate scandals (see the so-called apology tour in Egypt or the return of the Churchill bust).
I say this as a lifelong Republican: the GOP is currently dominated by short-sighted fools who are completely out of touch with the people, with what it means to govern, and with the real costs of violence. They've forgotten what it means to defend the Constitution, the country, and the people. They recall well, however, the support they receive as faithful supporters of the Military-Congressional-Industrial Complex. Therefore, when the same complaints can be made against Obama (and they can--he was a real coup for the MCI Complex, whether or not the administration sees it in their interests to define a coup), there's no opposition with the credibility to make them.
1. an object made by a human being, typically one of cultural or historical interest: gold and silver artefacts.
2. something observed in a scientific investigation or experiment that is not naturally present but occurs as a result of the preparative or investigative procedure: the curvature of the surface is an artefact of the wide-angle view.
So, is this guy an intelligent design proponent? Oh wait, that's just the summary. In TFA the word appears once:
Firstly, the Moon is a culturally-significant object. Given this, we should no more treat it as a mere resource (as a giant mine or quarry) than we should treat Stonehenge or the pyramids as a convenient source of building materials. This is another way of making sense of the idea (already enshrined in space law) that the Moon is part of the
‘common heritage of mankind’. It may, of course, be pointed out that the Moon is not a human artifact whereas structures such as Stonehenge and the pyramids are. And this no doubt restricts the ways in which the Moon can realistically be viewed as culturally significant but not the fact that it has such significance. Moreover, this does not seem to be dependent upon how the present generation, or any particular generation of humans, happens to feel about the Moon. [Emphasis mine]
That's a different statement. Still, there're some hidden premises there he should support if he wants people to buy that argument.
Actually it's not that unlikely that your Slashdotting colleagues are bureaucrats/politicians. Just think of it, the perfect way to infiltrate the opposition. When they get control of enough karma they can begin manipulating which opinions get heard and which do not by a segment of the pro software-, speech-, and political-freedom movement.
What you're saying is a comfort to many. We like to think, for example, that if only we elect moral and decent politicians (in other words, the ones we support) they'll head a moral and decent government. Its reassuring to believe that G. W. Bush's personal moral failings are chiefly responsible for the abuses of 2000-08 and if only Gore had won we'd have been spared government encroachment. Or, alternatively, if McCain had won we'd have been saved from the executive abuses that have occurred under Obama. It is a comfort to make politics and institutional behavior chiefly questions of individual moral agency because it offers an easy solution to whatever problems we might face: put the right people in charge.
As much comfort as this notion might offer, it fails to account for the fact that human beings create institutions which, on the one hand, constrain and direct individual behavior and which operate according to a logic of their own apart from the agency of the individuals who might serve in them, on the other hand. Both of these points are phenomena which have been well-studied at least since Max Weber and recent work on emergent behavior only reinforces them. Many were surprised to see the continuity of policy that has persisted over the past four presidential administrations (and arguably even further back into the Cold War). In this time we've seen some very different personalities in office, but such personality differences amount to little compared to what has continued unabated: the growth of federal bureaucracy; the growth of the warfare and security state and a concomitant aggressive foreign policy; the prominent ties between the financial sector, regulatory agencies, and monetary policy; the consistent energy policy (or ostensible and convenient lack thereof); the growth of ever more powerful lobbies; globalization; the reduction of social mobility--accelerating since the eighties; and a centralization of wealth and power in the hands of a class so concentrated it would have startled even C. Wright Mills.
It is easy to say that bad people do bad things and good people do good things. It is rather more disturbing to realize that good people can be made to participate in bad deeds unwittingly, and as part of a greater whole which operates according to its own logic.
And, don't forget, Putin is the former head of the KGB.
FYI: Putin was not, as is commonly stated, head of the KGB. The highest rank he achieved before his resignation was Lt. Colonel. He was appointed head of the FSB in '98 by Yeltsin, however. FSB is one of the successor organizations of the KGB, covering similar ground to that of MI5 (particularly counter intelligence and domestic surveillance, all the fun of the FBI and NSA rolled into one).
It is interesting in this regard to note that George H.W. Bush was himself once Director of Central Intelligence (CIA head). One might almost get the impression that being privy to the secrets gathered by a state security apparatus has political advantages.
[...] I have to disagree with your view [...] that only corporations are amoral
Such is not my view, so I would welcome you to reject it. In our age, however, the amoral quality of modern corporations has profound consequences because of their prominence--hence my focus on them. But perhaps my position will be clearer in light of one of your statements.
It would not be unreasonable, then, to say that the product morality of a corporation is derived from the collective morals of its shareholders, individually weighted by the number of shares each owns.
I do not think we can say that the product morality of a given corporation is derived from the collective morals of its shareholders. The purpose (telos, if you will) of a corporation is to create wealth. The distinctive means by which it accomplishes this end is by securing investment through reducing an investor's risk by limiting liability and pooling resources. In theory, as you indicate, an individual shareholder given proportional control over the company (i.e. over its board of directors, depending on how the company is structured) would exercise a proportional degree of moral agency over the company. Therefore, a high proportion of moral shareholders voting conscientiously would lead a corporation to engage primarily in moral actions, or at least to attempt the same. If that were the end of the story, I would agree with you.
In practice, however, corporations are not owned directly by individual, conscientious shareholders who act as moral agents by making discrete moral decisions with regard to the companies direction. In practice, there are intermediate institutions between individual shareholders and corporations which calculate investment in corporations on a strictly monetary basis--the kind of calculations that computers can--and with a little help from human expertise aimed at the same end--do make. These intermediate institutions include mutual funds, pension funds, IRAs, banks, venture capital and other investment firms. These, not individual shareholders, own directly the bulk of most major corporations. Take as an example the following numbers from the American Petroleum Institute (a pro-fossil fuel lobby). If you take their stats, individual ownership of the fossil fuel industry is about 23.9% of the total. The majority is owned by mediating institutions: pension funds (31.2%), mutual funds (20.6%), IRAs (17.7%), "other" institutional investors (6.6%). To offer another example, a cursory glance at the major holders of GM will show that the overwhelming majority of shares are held by institutional investors. You'll find a similar tale with most major corporations.
There are important consequences to this fact. When you get a job, be it as a teacher, policeman, professor, factory worker, or in lower level management in retail, you may be offered one or more plans for retirement benefits. Regardless of whether you choose the pension (if you're lucky enough to have that option), the 401k, or something else, you are indirectly becoming a shareholder in a great many major corporations. Your ownership of any individual corporation is not direct, it is managed by other people, and it is vanishingly small. With your ownership so small, even if on your two weeks vacation from your factory job you traced precisely through whom you owned what and how, you could not exercise any effective control in the corporation. With ownership so heavily mediated, there is no direct means of exercising agency with regard to that little you might theoretically claim as yours. Your retirement fund managers will try to do well by you, calculating what investments are most likely to yield returns and adjusting investments accordingly--sometimes at lightning speeds. But with such a responsibility, they're even less likely than you to evaluate purchases based upon the morality of a given corporation's actions. It is a
One has to wonder the concept of personhood another must have to believe a mere artifact (the corporation as an institution) worthy of that high title "person". After all, corporations have no soul, feeling neither pain nor joy. They're just machines. It would quite literally take a sociopath to view a corporation sincerely as a person in any sense other than as a legal fiction.
Sure. It'd be lovely if they would, but we cannot expect it except as a p.r. campaign.
The strength and greatness of the modern corporation lies in its careful construction as a money making machine. The liability of the ownership is limited to what they invest and the responsibility of the board and management is limited to ensuring the shareholders receive returns--in some cases by law. Because the corporation is structured this way, it has an institutional mandate built in to increase its wealth production by whatever means it can get away with.
The weakness and danger of the modern corporation also lies in its careful construction as a money making machine. The incentive structure is not aimed at giving back to the world but--quite the opposite--wherever possible at externalizing costs (e.g. dumping chemicals in the river rather than cleaning them up or paying employees less and less while lobbying for a more robust social welfare system so the cheap employees can feed themselves without affecting the shareholders' returns). Meanwhile one cannot expect particularly conscientious demands on the part of the shareholders since the ownership, by and large, is mediated through other institutions (e.g. mutual funds purchased as a retirement package).
The Western world has benefited greatly from the incredible corporate wealth creation potential. Wealth is morally neutral; it's but a tool. The corporation, however, is not so much morally neutral as inherently amoral. It's a machine that simply creates wealth in such a way that individual moral agency has little bearing upon it (as it would with a tool). In consequence, one should not expect it to give back to the world, only to its shareholders. If one wants a conscience in business, he must look to individuals, cooperatives, or privately owned firms. Such business models are themselves morally neutral, but their ownership is such that they, unlike modern corporations, can evaluate the firms performance on bases other than shareholder returns.
Microsoft isn't out saving the poor from malaria, Bill Gates is. Why should Bill Gates expect Google as a corporation to be doing what he's doing as an individual philanthropist, rather than floating internet balloons which holds long-term potential for shareholders?
People may not, but the government cares enough to support Red Flag. And may have happened once, if briefly, if only in a few government ministries . Still, I'd be pessimistic about the prospects too. For one thing, its harder to hide a backdoor in open source software.
next year will be the year of the [Red Flag] Linux Desktop. In all seriousness though, updating China has to be eagerly anticipated in Redmond. It might even be in the Chinese government's interests to encourage users to adopt Linux rather than sending all that money to the States.
I don't doubt it. I wasn't defending the man. I was responding to the specific use of "history is written by the victors." This is true, as far as it goes, but a critical look at a text, even if it is written by the victors, can tell one things even the victors don't want to be known. This is doubly true if there are other texts or archaeological evidence (in this case, bodies).
And let's put it this way, you would only ever lend your car to family and close friends but you are not going to freely share your car with strangers, so the law should allow you to share content with friends, but not millions of strangers. I think that in all these laws there needs to be a physical analogy associated with digital content.
When someone uses my car, I cannot because it is occupied. I was unaware that if I play or stream a piece of music that no one else could. Now I see why content owners want people thrown in jail to prevent them using their stuff.
In all seriousness though, granting all your premises for the sake of understanding: do you really think this is worth a felony? When we talk about a felony, we're not just talking about a fine. In the U.S., felonies are by definition punishable by a year or more in prison. And after you've served your time you remain a felon. You know that check box on job applications which says, "Have you ever been convicted of a felony"? In practical terms that means, "Can we toss your application in the trash without further consideration?" Again, granting that it is a crime, is completely ruining a person's life really an equitable punishment, a just punishment, for streaming a song as annoying background music on a personal website?
For those who don't realize it, "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," in Hammurabi's code and the OT is actually a restriction against unjustly harsh retribution. How? Well, look at policies like this to see the truly draconian.
[...] I don't think our legislators are capable of in a world that is now changing so quickly.
Their behavior certainly supports this claim. While I agree that in part it has to do with the rapidity of change, I would suggest that it also has to do with the size of our state institutions. A national government cannot respond to every local need in much the same way a teacher cannot listen to hundreds of students ask questions at the same time. Local problems are compounded when they're addressed on a higher level of government in that they become information problems as well. And yet in the U.S. we have come to treat all problems as national problems. Legislators could potentially respond more effectively to changing conditions if more of the legislation were done on a lower, more local level of government, thus narrowing the range of issues on which they have to focus.
This is why I support efforts in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity. Some projects are best left to a central government (maintenance of a navy and standing army comes to mind, as well as protection of the large waterways which cross state boundaries, providing for a common trade policy, etc), but a great many should be devolved to the states and even counties, parishes and municipalities.
Not the case here though. Where homo means same, as in homogenous, it's coming from the Greek prefix homo- meaning same. The noun homo, hominis comes from the Latin. Of course the pain of figuring this stuff out only gets worse when you know both languages and find words haphazardly compounded from both Greek and Latin roots (given the context, homosexual comes to mind, a term coming from 19th c. psychology) in ways that make classicists twitch. Medical Latin is far worse than the admittedly idiomatic legal Latin in this regard, but scientific names just make a fellow want to drink away the pain. Honestly, though I recognize the need for unique terms, we may as well be using Klingon as some of the things they come up with.
History is written by the victors. In the following generation, however, it often becomes the province of historians who, applying a healthy bit of Quellenkritik to everything the victors wrote, can produce a revisionist history opposing the original official history, knowing that successfully producing a new narrative will make their career. If you do Quellenkritik correctly, you can sometimes use source to show that, regardless of authorial intent, it actually support a narrative contrary to the claims of its own author.
I rather agree with Hayek's views on central planning. But central planning is not the only road to servitude and even the path of classical liberalism can lead to such an end, as Hilaire Belloc warns in The Servile State (it may be found here free, here in paper, and here for free on audio). I sometimes find it interesting, in spite of my libertarian leanings, to consider third ways, apart from the old collectivist/individualist dichotomy.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey! Where's your patriotism? Remember the Maine! Remember the Lusitania! Remember the Maddox! Remember that Saddam was an evil man who had used WMDs and since al Qaeda was led by an evil man it clearly follows that Saddam had ties to al Qaeda. Why would you ever doubt an administration's casus belli?
The sad thing is that there's so much to criticize in this administration's foreign policy (e.g. illegal wars in Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, parts of Africa and the destabilization these wars cause, scandalous spying on our allies, etc.). The problem is that, with exceedingly few exceptions, prominent Republicans have no credibility to criticize the President on these issues. If anything, the old Republican establishment's complaint tends to be that the President was not aggressive enough in involving us in illegal wars. Because of this, they like their former presidential nominee have to inflate or even fabricate scandals (see the so-called apology tour in Egypt or the return of the Churchill bust).
I say this as a lifelong Republican: the GOP is currently dominated by short-sighted fools who are completely out of touch with the people, with what it means to govern, and with the real costs of violence. They've forgotten what it means to defend the Constitution, the country, and the people. They recall well, however, the support they receive as faithful supporters of the Military-Congressional-Industrial Complex. Therefore, when the same complaints can be made against Obama (and they can--he was a real coup for the MCI Complex, whether or not the administration sees it in their interests to define a coup), there's no opposition with the credibility to make them.
So, is this guy an intelligent design proponent? Oh wait, that's just the summary. In TFA the word appears once:
That's a different statement. Still, there're some hidden premises there he should support if he wants people to buy that argument.
Actually it's not that unlikely that your Slashdotting colleagues are bureaucrats/politicians. Just think of it, the perfect way to infiltrate the opposition. When they get control of enough karma they can begin manipulating which opinions get heard and which do not by a segment of the pro software-, speech-, and political-freedom movement.
What you're saying is a comfort to many. We like to think, for example, that if only we elect moral and decent politicians (in other words, the ones we support) they'll head a moral and decent government. Its reassuring to believe that G. W. Bush's personal moral failings are chiefly responsible for the abuses of 2000-08 and if only Gore had won we'd have been spared government encroachment. Or, alternatively, if McCain had won we'd have been saved from the executive abuses that have occurred under Obama. It is a comfort to make politics and institutional behavior chiefly questions of individual moral agency because it offers an easy solution to whatever problems we might face: put the right people in charge.
As much comfort as this notion might offer, it fails to account for the fact that human beings create institutions which, on the one hand, constrain and direct individual behavior and which operate according to a logic of their own apart from the agency of the individuals who might serve in them, on the other hand. Both of these points are phenomena which have been well-studied at least since Max Weber and recent work on emergent behavior only reinforces them. Many were surprised to see the continuity of policy that has persisted over the past four presidential administrations (and arguably even further back into the Cold War). In this time we've seen some very different personalities in office, but such personality differences amount to little compared to what has continued unabated: the growth of federal bureaucracy; the growth of the warfare and security state and a concomitant aggressive foreign policy; the prominent ties between the financial sector, regulatory agencies, and monetary policy; the consistent energy policy (or ostensible and convenient lack thereof); the growth of ever more powerful lobbies; globalization; the reduction of social mobility--accelerating since the eighties; and a centralization of wealth and power in the hands of a class so concentrated it would have startled even C. Wright Mills.
It is easy to say that bad people do bad things and good people do good things. It is rather more disturbing to realize that good people can be made to participate in bad deeds unwittingly, and as part of a greater whole which operates according to its own logic.
Our rulers are, for the most part, not people. They're institutions and bureaucracies.
Smeg yeah, I can. This recently uncovered footage shows that the second shooter was human.
FYI: Putin was not, as is commonly stated, head of the KGB. The highest rank he achieved before his resignation was Lt. Colonel. He was appointed head of the FSB in '98 by Yeltsin, however. FSB is one of the successor organizations of the KGB, covering similar ground to that of MI5 (particularly counter intelligence and domestic surveillance, all the fun of the FBI and NSA rolled into one).
It is interesting in this regard to note that George H.W. Bush was himself once Director of Central Intelligence (CIA head). One might almost get the impression that being privy to the secrets gathered by a state security apparatus has political advantages.
If it ain't broke... then it's harder to sell upgrades.
Such is not my view, so I would welcome you to reject it. In our age, however, the amoral quality of modern corporations has profound consequences because of their prominence--hence my focus on them. But perhaps my position will be clearer in light of one of your statements.
I do not think we can say that the product morality of a given corporation is derived from the collective morals of its shareholders. The purpose (telos, if you will) of a corporation is to create wealth. The distinctive means by which it accomplishes this end is by securing investment through reducing an investor's risk by limiting liability and pooling resources. In theory, as you indicate, an individual shareholder given proportional control over the company (i.e. over its board of directors, depending on how the company is structured) would exercise a proportional degree of moral agency over the company. Therefore, a high proportion of moral shareholders voting conscientiously would lead a corporation to engage primarily in moral actions, or at least to attempt the same. If that were the end of the story, I would agree with you.
In practice, however, corporations are not owned directly by individual, conscientious shareholders who act as moral agents by making discrete moral decisions with regard to the companies direction. In practice, there are intermediate institutions between individual shareholders and corporations which calculate investment in corporations on a strictly monetary basis--the kind of calculations that computers can--and with a little help from human expertise aimed at the same end--do make. These intermediate institutions include mutual funds, pension funds, IRAs, banks, venture capital and other investment firms. These, not individual shareholders, own directly the bulk of most major corporations. Take as an example the following numbers from the American Petroleum Institute (a pro-fossil fuel lobby). If you take their stats, individual ownership of the fossil fuel industry is about 23.9% of the total. The majority is owned by mediating institutions: pension funds (31.2%), mutual funds (20.6%), IRAs (17.7%), "other" institutional investors (6.6%). To offer another example, a cursory glance at the major holders of GM will show that the overwhelming majority of shares are held by institutional investors. You'll find a similar tale with most major corporations.
There are important consequences to this fact. When you get a job, be it as a teacher, policeman, professor, factory worker, or in lower level management in retail, you may be offered one or more plans for retirement benefits. Regardless of whether you choose the pension (if you're lucky enough to have that option), the 401k, or something else, you are indirectly becoming a shareholder in a great many major corporations. Your ownership of any individual corporation is not direct, it is managed by other people, and it is vanishingly small. With your ownership so small, even if on your two weeks vacation from your factory job you traced precisely through whom you owned what and how, you could not exercise any effective control in the corporation. With ownership so heavily mediated, there is no direct means of exercising agency with regard to that little you might theoretically claim as yours. Your retirement fund managers will try to do well by you, calculating what investments are most likely to yield returns and adjusting investments accordingly--sometimes at lightning speeds. But with such a responsibility, they're even less likely than you to evaluate purchases based upon the morality of a given corporation's actions. It is a
Heh. They're more machine now than man.
One has to wonder the concept of personhood another must have to believe a mere artifact (the corporation as an institution) worthy of that high title "person". After all, corporations have no soul, feeling neither pain nor joy. They're just machines. It would quite literally take a sociopath to view a corporation sincerely as a person in any sense other than as a legal fiction.
Sure. It'd be lovely if they would, but we cannot expect it except as a p.r. campaign.
The strength and greatness of the modern corporation lies in its careful construction as a money making machine. The liability of the ownership is limited to what they invest and the responsibility of the board and management is limited to ensuring the shareholders receive returns--in some cases by law. Because the corporation is structured this way, it has an institutional mandate built in to increase its wealth production by whatever means it can get away with.
The weakness and danger of the modern corporation also lies in its careful construction as a money making machine. The incentive structure is not aimed at giving back to the world but--quite the opposite--wherever possible at externalizing costs (e.g. dumping chemicals in the river rather than cleaning them up or paying employees less and less while lobbying for a more robust social welfare system so the cheap employees can feed themselves without affecting the shareholders' returns). Meanwhile one cannot expect particularly conscientious demands on the part of the shareholders since the ownership, by and large, is mediated through other institutions (e.g. mutual funds purchased as a retirement package).
The Western world has benefited greatly from the incredible corporate wealth creation potential. Wealth is morally neutral; it's but a tool. The corporation, however, is not so much morally neutral as inherently amoral. It's a machine that simply creates wealth in such a way that individual moral agency has little bearing upon it (as it would with a tool). In consequence, one should not expect it to give back to the world, only to its shareholders. If one wants a conscience in business, he must look to individuals, cooperatives, or privately owned firms. Such business models are themselves morally neutral, but their ownership is such that they, unlike modern corporations, can evaluate the firms performance on bases other than shareholder returns.
Microsoft isn't out saving the poor from malaria, Bill Gates is. Why should Bill Gates expect Google as a corporation to be doing what he's doing as an individual philanthropist, rather than floating internet balloons which holds long-term potential for shareholders?
People may not, but the government cares enough to support Red Flag. And may have happened once, if briefly, if only in a few government ministries . Still, I'd be pessimistic about the prospects too. For one thing, its harder to hide a backdoor in open source software.
next year will be the year of the [Red Flag] Linux Desktop. In all seriousness though, updating China has to be eagerly anticipated in Redmond. It might even be in the Chinese government's interests to encourage users to adopt Linux rather than sending all that money to the States.
I don't doubt it. I wasn't defending the man. I was responding to the specific use of "history is written by the victors." This is true, as far as it goes, but a critical look at a text, even if it is written by the victors, can tell one things even the victors don't want to be known. This is doubly true if there are other texts or archaeological evidence (in this case, bodies).
When someone uses my car, I cannot because it is occupied. I was unaware that if I play or stream a piece of music that no one else could. Now I see why content owners want people thrown in jail to prevent them using their stuff.
In all seriousness though, granting all your premises for the sake of understanding: do you really think this is worth a felony? When we talk about a felony, we're not just talking about a fine. In the U.S., felonies are by definition punishable by a year or more in prison. And after you've served your time you remain a felon. You know that check box on job applications which says, "Have you ever been convicted of a felony"? In practical terms that means, "Can we toss your application in the trash without further consideration?" Again, granting that it is a crime, is completely ruining a person's life really an equitable punishment, a just punishment, for streaming a song as annoying background music on a personal website?
For those who don't realize it, "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," in Hammurabi's code and the OT is actually a restriction against unjustly harsh retribution. How? Well, look at policies like this to see the truly draconian.
Their behavior certainly supports this claim. While I agree that in part it has to do with the rapidity of change, I would suggest that it also has to do with the size of our state institutions. A national government cannot respond to every local need in much the same way a teacher cannot listen to hundreds of students ask questions at the same time. Local problems are compounded when they're addressed on a higher level of government in that they become information problems as well. And yet in the U.S. we have come to treat all problems as national problems. Legislators could potentially respond more effectively to changing conditions if more of the legislation were done on a lower, more local level of government, thus narrowing the range of issues on which they have to focus.
This is why I support efforts in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity. Some projects are best left to a central government (maintenance of a navy and standing army comes to mind, as well as protection of the large waterways which cross state boundaries, providing for a common trade policy, etc), but a great many should be devolved to the states and even counties, parishes and municipalities.
And that, over many centuries of contract with humans, is a reason why dogs are safer than wolves or orcas.
So given what Tilikum did to that guy who snuck into his tank, I'm guessing he'd taste like sausage.
No, but Dean Wormer is arguably an attempted fratricide.
Not the case here though. Where homo means same, as in homogenous, it's coming from the Greek prefix homo- meaning same. The noun homo, hominis comes from the Latin. Of course the pain of figuring this stuff out only gets worse when you know both languages and find words haphazardly compounded from both Greek and Latin roots (given the context, homosexual comes to mind, a term coming from 19th c. psychology) in ways that make classicists twitch. Medical Latin is far worse than the admittedly idiomatic legal Latin in this regard, but scientific names just make a fellow want to drink away the pain. Honestly, though I recognize the need for unique terms, we may as well be using Klingon as some of the things they come up with.
History is written by the victors. In the following generation, however, it often becomes the province of historians who, applying a healthy bit of Quellenkritik to everything the victors wrote, can produce a revisionist history opposing the original official history, knowing that successfully producing a new narrative will make their career. If you do Quellenkritik correctly, you can sometimes use source to show that, regardless of authorial intent, it actually support a narrative contrary to the claims of its own author.
I rather agree with Hayek's views on central planning. But central planning is not the only road to servitude and even the path of classical liberalism can lead to such an end, as Hilaire Belloc warns in The Servile State (it may be found here free, here in paper, and here for free on audio). I sometimes find it interesting, in spite of my libertarian leanings, to consider third ways, apart from the old collectivist/individualist dichotomy.