Skip to main content

Necessary conflict in free societies

This week's freedom quote of the week on "ideas@theCentre", the Centre for Independent Studies weekly email is:

 "In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary."
Kathleen Norris                 
         

I'd not heard of Kathleen Norris until seeing this, so I looked her up on Wikipedia. Turns out there's more than one famous Kathleen Norris. One's a living American poet and another is a popular dead American novelist and columnist from the first half of the 20th century.

According to Wiki the latter Kathleen Norris:
 "... used her fiction to promote values including the sanctity of marriage, the nobility of motherhood, and the importance of service to others....Norris became involved in various social causes, including women's suffrage, Prohibition, pacifism, and organizations to benefit children and the poor."
 I'm assuming it's this latter Kathleen Norris who is quoted. I like her quote. A lot. It helps me come to terms a little with the fact that I often find myself in inevitable conflict with people I respect and admire over seemingly obvious events and policy. It's nice to know that someone thought that that the conflict is necessary, even if unresolvable. I feel slightly better about my tendency on occasions to plough into the thick of the prevailing wisdom in a discussion and make myself disagreeable.

Maybe I should read some more Kathleen Norris sometime.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Michael Jackson, martyr ?

. Someone has to die for their beliefs to be a martyr . Drudge pointed to headlines last Friday saying that Jackson's was a " Death by Showbusines s". So in the sense that Jackson seems to have died for his belief in celebrity, yes, he might be called a martyr. I never got Michael Jackson. Thriller didn't thrill me at all ( Now Noel Coward, that's another story ). But I did get a bit of a kick from seeing others get him. He was boppy and catchy and slick, as well as monumentally fluffy and hugely impaired. What I struggle with is the apparently massive consequentiality of fluffiness and impairment like Jackson's. What is the fuss about the passing of a semi-talented song and dance weirdo from decades past? Boris Johnson, the London Mayor, has had a stab at explaining it to we mystified souls who struggle to get with the programme. He reckons it's just like Princess Di. And I agree, to the extent that I was almost as unprepared for and dumbfounded by th
2 comments
Read more

Rugby bureaucrats, Stalin's spawn?

In recent weeks two larger than life Rugby players have experienced the tyranny of justice in a universe even more capricious and hostile than their sport: the world of sports officialdom. First Bakkies Botha , the great and brutal Springbok second-rower, got a raw deal from some small minded and ignorant Rugby officials. They banned him for a couple of matches over an incident that any disinterested rugby fan will tell you happens at nearly every ruck in every game of rugby: the clean out. The Springboks protested this dumb decision by each Springbok player wearing an armband saying "JUSTICE 4 Bakkies" at the following Test match against the British & Irish Lions in Jo'berg. And now the Springboks themselves have been cited by the International Rugby Board for "bringing the game into disrepute" and breaching the "IRB Code of Conduct" by questioning the disciplinary rulings of IRB sanctioned bodies. From little stupidities, big stupidities grow
1 comment
Read more

Perpetual pretenders proclaiming possession of Truth ... (fact check the fat cheque)

Samizdata.net  have pointed me to an article in Public entitled " Nacissism of the Fact Checkers ". It's a sobering though disturbingly unsurprising read.  It adds to the litany of distressingly wrong facts that have been endorsed and perpetuated by the "official narrative" and with the reciprocal suppression or censorship of correct "falsehoods".  Here's a list of such behaviours by fact checkers from the article: - calling out a self avowed parody site for misinformation on the Paris riots for posting a typically over the top clip from the action movie "Fast & Furious"; -  that claim by the New York Times, AP and the BBC that fake news travels 6 times faster than the factual news, turns out to be fake news itself. The claim is based on a single MIT study on small number of tweets , not news. - Facebook removing 20 million posts, and labeling 190 million posts about Covid-19 as "content moderation" because those posts did
Post a Comment
Read more