August 2023 – Quick Abacus

August 31, 2023 Political Ideologies / Socialism

Judge them by their deeds — not their words!

The so-called “Critical Theory” was invented by Max Horkheimer in the early days of the Frankfurt School and modified by Juergen Habermas as the central ideology of Neo-Marxism in Germany in the 1970s. Its main philosophical opponent was Karl Raimund Popper’s “Critical Rationalism”. Popper, an Austrian Jew who taught at the London School of Economics, is the author of two pivotal works: “The Open Society and its Enemies” and “Conjectures and Refutations”.

Very much in a nutshell, one could say that what Popper envisaged as an open society is one that is based on democracy and the uninhibited exchange of information and opinions, on free press, and free and open debate – much like the founding fathers of the American Republic and authors of the US Constitution. In “Conjectures and Refutations” Popper debates how we should establish truth and determine what is a fact and what isn’t. He postulates that theories and assertions that do not meet the minimum requirement of being falsifiable, should be considered mere opinions.

August 17, 2023 Culture and Religion

Individualism on the Stakes

Individualism is founded on the principle that the individual human constitutes a higher value than the collective. The most plausible argument for this principle is that all collectives consist of individuals.

Collectivists maintain that the collective constitutes a superior value and a greater good. Indeed, the individual cannot exist if not as part of some collective. The family, the clan, the village, the nation. Inversely, one could argue that collectives cannot exist without individuals.

Collectivists promise us the perfect society with all of mankind as the governed collective and they brush off the argument that they are destroying millions of individuals and make more millions miserable in their effort to establish the perfect collective.

August 3, 2023 Culture and Religion / Political Ideologies

The Marseillaise — An Old Anthem in a New Light

By now, you will have heard about the riots in France. As I write these lines, violent and chaotic conditions still prevail in almost all major French cities. According to my AI friend, approximately 1,300 protesters and 270 policemen have been injured or killed thus far plus an unknown number of civilian bystanders. Many cars burned.

These riots were sparked by the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old Algerian immigrant named Nahel Merzouk in Nanterre. Allegedly, Nahel was performing weird antics with a yellow car in front of a school building. Allegedly, the officer feared Nahel might hurt somebody and tried to stop him. When Nahel would not stop, the officer shot him.