Should Taleb Meet with the Maronite Patriarch to Discuss the Political Future of Lebanon?

6) These idiots from the #Lebanese "civil society" cannot grasp that we must avoid a revolution.
They practically ALL end poorly (BTW the American Rev. was a separatist movement, not a revolution).

Work on gradual evolution. Pick the least bad PM.https://t.co/kEAPxFC5Pc

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) July 27, 2021

The Collapse of Industrial Ag

Many people handwriting about if we can "scale regenerative practices."

Yet few acknowledge the current system has an expiration date. The disconnect is almost comical.

Pesticides Are Killing the World's Soils https://t.co/R7Yq1CPh6y via @sciam

— Robb Wolf (@robbwolf) June 2, 2021

Schumacher on Scale

"All this, I believe, hangs together – smallness, simplicity, and non-violence, all related to the #humanscale, all related to the humanisation of human work, all conducive to the re-integration of the human being into the productive process..."

~E.F. Schumacher

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) November 18, 2020

Finding Common Ground?

We might be closer to finding common ground than we realize. We can know only through a conversation in search of our common hopes and fears. https://t.co/6D4gkHJFUE pic.twitter.com/3LtazVmJXs

— David Korten (@dkorten) November 12, 2020

David Korten relies on the writing of Paul Chappell. While families and communities are important goods for the individual, they are not sustained apart from norms about individual behavior, and it is here that the disagreement between Reds and Blues. What can Korten do about that? Nothing, except to repeat some tired liberal beliefs.

Our political discourse is hobbled by the linear "left-right" axis of affiliation. Blake Pagenkopf, author of "The Structure of Political Positions," joins Chuck on this episode of The Strong Towns Podcast to bring a new dimension into frame. https://t.co/UPPGlGyjLZ

— Strong Towns (@StrongTowns) November 10, 2020

Related:

“Conservative religious critiques of liberalism are not novel. They are not fascistic departures from the American heritage, or foreign arguments brought over with Catholic migrants. They are part of a longstanding American tradition.”https://t.co/waYFOHc82t

— Matthew Schmitz (@matthewschmitz) November 12, 2020

Colluding at the Expense of the Common Good

Her sponsor was caught, w/evidence of yuuuuge THEFT in a country falling apart. Instead of replacing him at the head of the party, or apologizing for the crimes, @NadaBoustani [former minister] defends him with mawkish mis-citation of Camus.
Camus was not talking about thieves! https://t.co/2epVhiFioQ

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) November 9, 2020

Andy Smarick on Political Prudence

But really, this is an anti-Trump piece. He thinks that people can have sufficient governing experience for the state or even for the Federal Government? Hell, no. And bureaucracy or meritocracy cannot provide "exerptise" to assist the Chief Executive.

Grateful to @smarick for writing this and drawing on my own thoughts on political prudence. I agree wholeheartedly with what he's up to in this piece.

On Practical Wisdom in Statecraft | City Journal https://t.co/rHElv1YY2S

— Jennifer A. Frey (@jennfrey) October 19, 2020

City Journal

Another Endorsement for ASP

🔥

"I’ve been told that voting third party is a privilege. I solemnly agree. I am using my privilege to vote for a future America, one in which we have more morally and politically acceptable major party candidates. We can do so much better."
- @KSPriorhttps://t.co/fKCG3Dht3O

— Brian Carroll 2020 (@BrianCarrollASP) October 28, 2020

Scale Does Matter

Someone didn't analyze enough variables...

Size doesn't matter for #devolution or reform, writes our Principal Research Consultant, Mark Morrinhttps://t.co/dSKf1SYEeO

— ResPublica (@res_publica) October 21, 2020

NEW REPORT | Size doesn't matter: The arguments for place-based #devolution | Local government in England, regardless of type or scale, rarely corresponds with the footprint and jurisdiction for real economies or wider public services. https://t.co/bKWYRR9vp3 1/11

— ResPublica (@res_publica) October 21, 2020

Our new report that argues in essence that there is no one size that fits all - I personally believe that we need unitary local governance everywhere but that this can be either large or small - we need unified governance to deal with all the externalities that fuel disadvantage https://t.co/8Ft8AOidak

— Phillip Blond (@Phillip_Blond) October 21, 2020

The Dunbar Number of 150 Makes an Appearance in This Essay

Personalism, Small Churches, and Building Community by Archpriest Lawrence Farley |(originally published at No Other Foundation)

But here in North America, we have a number of Orthodox churches which are less Imperial in their architecture and numbers, churches which can hold only a few hundred people, if that. That, I suggest, is no bad thing, for it allows us to recover the important personalism from the early church which was increasingly lost in the Church’s Byzantine period. We have the possibility once again of actually getting to know the fellow members of our local church community and of praying for them all by name. Church growth is good, and we are called to grow. But we must take care in our growth not to lose this personalism, which is so important to internal spiritual growth.

In particular, if a congregation grows to a size of about 200 people or so, they might consider splitting and founding another daughter church somewhere else (obviously with the bishop’s blessing), so that the local church never gets above 150 in number. Church growth gurus teach us that 150 is the maximum number in which authentic community can occur. In any church much bigger than that, it becomes hard to really know your fellow worshippers, and one fades into the anonymity of the mega-church. We have emerged from Byzantium, and are increasingly marginalized in our pluralistic North American society. That brings with it its own sorrows. But it also brings with it the possibility for recovering true community in our churches, and with it, a spirit of love.

Federalism Movement in Lebanon

Now, PRINCIPIA POLITICA is read in #Lebanon. #Federalism is unavoidable. https://t.co/OYLUy68jY3

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) September 28, 2020

Lebanon is about the size of Connecticut, with about twice its population. If federalism is warranted for Lebanon, how about Connecticut? And if American states should be broken up, then our obsolete federal system (which makes an appearance now and then) should be replaced.

Regenerative Agriculture

Here’s how #regenerative #organic agriculture is changing the conversation around what it means to be #sustainable (featuring @BiggestLilFarm): https://t.co/e6QtyOLAyQ

— Rodale Institute (@RodaleInstitute) August 8, 2020

This interviewer got to the most vital issues - why with entire civilization dependent on agric. no sound biologically-based agr. can go to scale, and why no business in the world can be sustainable or regenerative until agr. is.https://t.co/fZ07qafHqy https://t.co/FolwiOha8G

— Allan Savory (@AllanRSavory) August 8, 2020

Mark Bauerlein Discusses American Secession

National Breakup? by Mark Bauerlein



American Secession by F. H. Buckley

More:
BookTV

Steve Sailer on a NYT Article on Community and (Geographic) Proximity

The Ties that Friend

FPR: Technology and the Virtues: Scale Matters By Jeffrey Bilbro

Allan Carlson Videos

Mark Mitchell on Scale

A Human Scale Future

Related:
Daniel McCarthy on Copperhead: Love Thy Neighborhood, Even in War

See the comment by Aaron Gross - can there be a community despite disagreement on important political questions?

John Milbank, The church offers a holistic solution to child poverty

The Economy Isn't Coming Back

How unchecked capitalism has brought world to the brink of apocalypse and what we must do now

Convergence: A Novel of a Catastrophic Future

Schumacher on Land

Schumacher Center for a New Economics: THINK ABOUT LAND
By Dr. E. F. Schumacher
A talk originally published by The Catholic Housing Aid Society

The Common Good and Scale

Thaddeus Kozinski and James Chastek respond to the Robert George-Michael Hannon debate on the common good. Maybe I will eventually write my own post, which will be a rehash of things I've already written before...

Preserving Liberty

Inescapable liberalism? Rescuing liberty from individualism and the State by Patrick Deneen

Defenders of a true human liberty need at once to "get bigger" and "get smaller." Rather than embrace the false universalism of "globalism," a true universality - under God - shows us the infinite narrowness of "globalization" and points us to the true nature of transcendence. And the only appropriate way to live in and through this transcendent is in the loci of the particular, those places which do not aspire to dim the light of the eternal City.

We need rather to attend to our States and localities, our communities and neighbourhoods, our families and our Church, making them viable alternatives and counterpoints to the monopolization of individual and State in our time, and thus to relearn the ancient virtue of self-government, and true liberty itself.

We have to attend to our States because of how sovereignty is currently understood and claimed, but even some of them are too big.

Once Again They Re-Fight the Civil War In the Combox

This time in a review by Joseph Baldacchino of What Keeps the States United?
Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century (edited by Donald Livingston) - What Keeps the States United?

Related:
A review by David Gordon.