How Each Party Leader Shone in Canada’s 2019 Leaders’ Debate (English)
October 7, 2019 by Paul McKeever · Comments Off on How Each Party Leader Shone in Canada’s 2019 Leaders’ Debate (English)
Here is how the leaders of the six largest political parties in Canada distinguished themselves during the only English-language leaders’ debate in Canada’s 2019 federal election. In alphabetical order: Read more
Voting in the 2019 Canadian federal election: A guide for freedom-seeking individualists
September 9, 2019 by Paul McKeever · Comments Off on Voting in the 2019 Canadian federal election: A guide for freedom-seeking individualists
You’re going to vote in the 2019 federal election. You want a Canada in which you can be you, peacefully, choosing for yourself what to buy, what to like, who to love etc.. You want a Canada in which, if other people want something different than you do: all the power to them. But you want others, likewise, to let you be you. You want the freedom to pursue your own happiness without being punished for achieving it. You want a Canadian government that defends your freedom instead of restricting it. This article is for you. Read more
Ellsworth Toohey’s collectivism: Answer to a question on Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”
July 1, 2019 by Paul McKeever · Comments Off on Ellsworth Toohey’s collectivism: Answer to a question on Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”
On June 30th, on the public Facebook group “Ayn Rand“, a person fairly new to Ms Rand’s works posted the following passage from Rand’s “The Fountainhead”, highlighting (among others) the parts that below appear in red text. The person in question asked something akin to “Please explain”. I did so, but it appears that the person deleted her post (and all responses to it). Rather than letting my answer/effort go to waste, I post it below the quoted passage. Read more
Love my substratum: A philosophical note on Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”
March 6, 2019 by Paul McKeever · Comments Off on Love my substratum: A philosophical note on Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”
In the history of philosophy, there are at least two famous instances of positing the existence of an entity having no identity: Aristotle’s “prima materia“, and John Locke’s “substratum“. In her novel Atlas Shrugged, author Ayn Rand concretizes the problem associated with the idea of an entity lacking an identity by way of a passage concerning love. Read more
The Lexicon of Government
January 15, 2019 by Paul McKeever · Comments Off on The Lexicon of Government
{The following are my notes, drafted in preparation for my January 14, 2019 video, The Lexicon of Government, available on my youtube channel, and embedded at the bottom of these notes.}
The other day, I was watching an “Ask Me Anything” Q&A session by Dave Rubin on his youtube channel, The Rubin Report. One of his viewers asked him what he thought about minarchism? Not having pronounced the word correctly, it seems pretty clear that this was the first time he had come across the concept of minarchism. Now, if you’ve seen the Rubin Report, you will know that Dave Rubin has been on journey of political development, and that he only recently discovered himself not to be the leftist he used to think himself to be. In fact the whole purpose of Dave’s show is to challenge one’s beliefs and to improve oneself in the process. So it’s not all that surprising that he hadn’t heard of minarchy before.
However, the term minarchy is – at the very least – problematic, and the incident on Dave’s show reminded me of a topic that I’ve been meaning to write about for almost two decades. That topic is: The Forms of Government, and How to Name them. And that is my topic today. Read more
