I know I’m running late with this, but it’s Banned Books Week, the annual commemoration of free speech and free press. As always, some people feel they have the authority to determine what the rest of us can see and read. They start with the schools and libraries under the familiar guise of protecting the children, but the ultimate goal is to restrict literature and education.
All writers and bloggers should always stand up to any kind of censorship. Remember, no one – absolutely no one – has the right to select what you can and cannot read!
A system of ethics that bases moral value on the likelihood of actions producing happiness.
“Eudaemonism” entered English in the 19th century from the Greek “εὐδαιμονία,” meaning happiness, with the suffix “-ism” to indicate a system of belief or practice. “Eudaemonism” is based on the Greek term “eudaemonia,” introduced by Aristotle. Aristotle’s “eudaemonia” described the positive condition of doing and living well. It was not, in fact, a synonym for happiness, but rather it described a greater state of positive existence, which combined wisdom, contemplation, virtue, and other beneficial attributes for personal success.
Example: Through all the anxiety and drama, I detected a true sense of eudaemonism in viewing the opening session of the January 6 Committee hearings.
“When billionaires talk about freedom, watch your wallets. Behind Elon Musk’s blather about free markets, free speech, and free choice is his goal to be free from accountability.”
Reich went on to say: “The “free market” increasingly reflects the demands of big money. Unfriendly takeovers, such as Musk threatens to mount at Twitter, weren’t part of the “free market” until the late 1970s and early 1980s. Before then, laws and regulations constrained them. Then came corporate raiders like Carl Icahn and Michael Milken. Their MO was to find corporations whose assets were worth more than their stock value, borrow against them, acquire enough shares to force them to cut costs (such as laying off workers, abandoning their communities, busting unions, and taking on crushing debt), and cash in. But the raiders’ antics often imposed huge social costs. They pushed America from stakeholder capitalism (where workers and communities had a say in what corporations did) to shareholder capitalism (where the sole corporate goal is to maximize shareholder value). Inequality skyrocketed, insecurity soared, vast swaths of America were abandoned, and millions of good jobs vanished.”
“In the end, if Jimmy and Susie are curious about any of the above, they can do what everyone else does – get a room at the Motel Six and grab the Gideons.”
He took issue with the many Biblical references to rape, bestiality, cannibalism and infanticide and proceeded to question whether the Bible is age-appropriate, pointing to its “casual” references to murder, adultery, sexual immorality, and fornication. “Do we really want to teach our youth about drunken orgies?”
Chief Writing Wolf 