Jeffrey Alexander Martin

This century began with a single major world power, the USA, but it will not end that way. The power and prominence of China has risen and fallen multiple times over the last few thousand years, and it is on the rise again. Last century saw the decline of Europe, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, and the eventual rise of the United States as the dominant world power. This century we're seeing the stagnation of the US. In this article I'm going to look at the primary reasons for China's rise and America's fall. The United States has continued to be thought of as capitalist even as government regulation has grown, as political corruption has grown, as socialist programs have been implemented, as taxes have increased, as property rights have decreased, as rule of law has decreased. At the same time China has continued to be thought of as communist, Marxist, and socialist even though it has eased regulations, reduced corruption, lessened socialist programs, lowered tax...

Once upon a time, in a land long ago, there lived a hare and a fox who were friends. They watched as a slow tortoise walked by. They laughed and jeered. Hare challenged the tortoise to a race. The tortoise accepted the challenge. The fox was the judge. The hare ran fast. The tortoise ran slow. The hare was so far ahead that it stopped to take a nap. The tortoise didn't stop. When the hare awoke and finished, the tortoise had already won. Don't stop. ________________________________________________ Find more at  JeffThinks.com  or  JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com  and  ResetMeditation.com

I was reviewing the great book 'Why Don't We Learn from History' by B. H. Liddell Hart for a college course I'm designing, and I noticed that he uses the phrase "We learn from history..." a few times. Like everything else in the book, they are excellent insights. "We learn from history that in every age and every clime the majority of people have resented what seems in retrospect to have been purely matter of fact comment on their institutions. We learn too that nothing has aided the persistence of falsehood, and the evils resulting from it, more than the unwillingness of good people to admit the truth when it was disturbing to their comfortable assurance. Always the tendency continues to be shocked by natural comment, and to hold certain things too "sacred” to think about. I can conceive of no finer ideal of a man’s life than to face life with clear eyes instead of stumbling through it like a blind man, an imbecile, or a drunkard — which, in a think...

"Tell me again dad," said young Teddy the tortoise, "of the time that you beat the hare in the race." "Lay your head down, and I will tell you." "When I was a young boy, just like you, I was walking down to the lake one day. I passed a hare and a fox talking. As I walked passed them the hare said, 'Wow! Look at this guy, he's so slow that if he was going any slower he would be going backward.' They laughed, but I ignored them and kept on walking." Teddy lifted his head. "Why didn't you just do it then?" "Because I didn't need to. Now, lay your head back down and I'll tell you the rest of the story. When I was walking back from the lake the hare and the fox were still standing there talking. The fox saw me coming and pointed. The hare turned and laughed. He said, 'It took you that long to get to the lake and back? I probably could have rolled you there faster.' They both laughed. I stopped and looked ...

The Tortoise and the Hare is one of those rare stories that almost everyone knows and can tell. It's very old, back to the ancient Greek Aesop about 2,600 years ago. It has been translated, rewritten, and adapted many times over the millennia. I think there are two fruitful things we can explore. One, the variety of moral lessons that can be taken from the story, which can be formulated in different ways. Two, as a writing exercise for playing with perspective, point of view, and style. Here is a version called The Hare and the Tortoise translated from the Greek by V. S. Vernon Jones in 1912. A Hare was one day making fun of a Tortoise for being so slow upon his feet. "Wait a bit," said the Tortoise; "I'll run a race with you, and I'll wager that I win." "Oh, well," replied the Hare, who was much amused at the idea, "let's try and see"; and it was soon agreed that the fox should set a course for them, and be the judge. When the ti...

Albert Einstein wrote an article called 'Why Socialism?' in 1949. It initially seems odd. In the 1930s Einstein had escaped the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The Cold War had started in the 1940s, primarily between the US and the Soviet Union. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union grew from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. So it seems odd that one of the smartest men in the world would think positively of socialism. Why would he agree with the philosophical foundations of the Nazis and Soviets? But, he makes some good points. For instance, he notes that science can't decide on ends, only on means, and that the goal of socialism is to change human nature for a futuristic society. "For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organi...