Things to write about

[elfs]

A few years ago, I filled a notebook with quotes I'd taken off philosophical arguments and websites. They were topics that I addressed in Journal Entries. They were big topics, things about religion and politics, culture and sex, about which my characters would talk and with which they would deal.

For a while, that notebook has been pretty quiet. But recently, I made some new notes in it. These are things I'd like to write about.

From Fears for Democrary, an idea I support:

The real "clash of civilizations" is not between "Islam" and "the West," but instead within virtually all modern nations -- between people who are prepared to live on terms of equal respect with others who are different, and those who seek the protection of homogeneity and the domination of a single "pure" religious and ethnic tradition.

From Does Economic Success Require Democracy?, which which I do not agree:

There is nothing theoretically compelling that suggests that democracy is the form of government that best reflects the underlying preferences of citizens. As a result, democracies will not necessarily outperform other types of mechanisms for preference aggregation as a route to economic prosperity. Dictatorships are not hamstrung by the preferences of voters for, say, a pervasive welfare state.