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

Will Ray Finkelstein's statutory "News Media Council" enable a totalitarian state?

" The fight for freedom begins with free speech " Aung San Suu Kyi, The Observer, Sunday 11 March 2012 Aung San Suu Kyi was not saying this specifically in response to the report published 11 days earlier by the Honourable Ray Finkelstein QC on 28 February 2012 of his "Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation", but she could have been. Mr Finkelstein says in his report to the Australian Federal Labor government, who commissioned it, the following: 11.44 To rectify existing and emerging weaknesses in the current regulatory structures it is recommended that there be established an independent statutory body which may be called the "News Media Council", to oversee the enforcement of standards of the news media. ... 11.55 The News Media Council requires clearly defined functions. It is not recommended that one of them be the promotion of free speech. There are other ample bodies and persons in the community who do that more than adequ...
2 comments
Read more

Professor Lindzen's seminar on Global Warming at Westminister in February 2012

Professor Richard S. Lindzen of the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gave a seminar to the House of Commons Committee Rooms in Westminster, London on 22 February 2012. Here is the link to the PDF of the slides he used at that seminar. There are many interesting quotes from these slides. This is one which took my fancy: “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.” Of the many new things I learnt from this, one is a better understanding of the importance of the scale of the attributed amplification effect of "forcings" from alleged positive feedbacks on the am...
Post a Comment
Read more