A conviction that those who perform the prayer of labor may store up a compensation which cannot be appropriated by the improvident is the soundest incentive to virtuous industry. Where the opposite conviction prevails, where popular majorities may, on a plea of present need, override these rights earned by past effort, the tendency is for…
Read moreWeaver on Self-Investment
It is precisely because providence takes into account the nonpresent that it calls for the exercise of reason and imagination. That I reap now the reward of my past industry or sloth, that what I do today will be felt in that future now potential–these require a play of mind. The notion that the state…
Read moreWeaver on Knowing the Transcendent
The first positive step must be a driving afresh of the wedge between the material and the transcendental. . . That there is a world of ought, that the apparent does not exhaust the real–these are so essential to the very conception of improvement that it should be superfluous to mention them. Weaver, Richard M.,…
Read moreWeaver on Capital
Though capital may, on the one hand, be the result of unproductive activity–or of “theft,” as left-wingers might declare–on the other hand, it maybe the fruit of industry and foresight, of self-denial, or of some superiority of gifts. The attack upon capital is not necessarily an attack upon inequity. IN the times which we describe…
Read moreWeaver on Demagogic Leaders
Demagogic leaders have told the common man that he is entitled to much more than he is getting; they have not told him the less pleasant truth that, unless there is to be expropriation–which in any case is only a temporary resource–the increase much some out of greater productivity. Weaver, Richard M., Ideas Have Consequences,…
Read moreWeaver on the Spoiled Child’s Aversion to Effort
Since he who longs to achieve does not ask whether the seat is soft of the weather at a pleasant temperature, it is obvious that hardness is a condition of heroism. Exertion, self-denial, endurance, these make the hero, but to the spoiled child they connote they connote the evil of nature and the malice of…
Read moreWeaver on De Tocqueville & the Motivation of Faith
De Tocqueville, alert to discern the effects of different social ideals, noted this well: “In ages of faith, the final end of life is placed beyond life. The men of those ages, therefore, naturally and almost involuntarily accustom themselves to fix their gaze for many years on some immovable object toward which they are constantly…
Read moreWeaver on the Spoiled-Child Psychology
Only by these facts can we explain the spoiled-child psychology of the urban masses. The scientists have given him the impression that there is nothing he cannot know, an false propagandists have told him that there is nothing he cannot have. Since the prime object of the latter is to appease, he has received concessions…
Read moreWeaver on Dismissing History
The man of culture finds the whole past relevant; the bourgeois and the barbarian find relevant only what has some pressing connection with their appetites. Weaver, Richard M., Ideas Have Consequences, p. 100.
Read moreWeaver on Resilience to Media Mendacity
The common man realizes that he has been misled and that there are those who would mislead him again; but, lacking analytical power, he tends to group every instance of organized expression with propaganda. In times of peace, too, he has exhibited a certain hardheaded resistance to attempts to drive or cajole him. We have…
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