I have spent many hours over the last couple of decades contemplating Lord Acton’s observation in a letter to a bishop that, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” I have read, studied, and observed the idea. Combining that with holding office gives me an interesting perspective to answer the complex question of, “How?”

Government is a mass negotiation through indirect means to incompatible ends. There are times when the government is synonymous with a person. When that occurs, it’s easier to see that corruption in the government comes from a corruption of the person. …

Everyone wants to make progress. To actually do that there are important questions to ask, the two most important being “Progress toward what?” and “How?” Studying reformations of the past, how they worked, and when they didn’t, helps to inform us on what may or may not work in the future.

The first modern city-wide zoning ordinance was enacted in 1916 by New York City. The idea spread and in 1926 there was a Supreme Court case between the Village of Euclid and Ambler Realty Company. It was determined that such zoning ordinances are legal. This innovation grew out of…

I have received suggestions from both residents in Dalton Township, and from state level organizations, tending toward having ordinances that are vague and subjective. I can understand the tendency in that direction. Working out laws that will be able to apply across a wide range of situations is difficult. Not every contingency can be covered. Therefore at some point reasonable decision making must come into play. And, that is all true, but there are two major problems with it.

One problem is that courts have ruled multiple times at multiple levels that vague and subjective laws are not enforceable. Defining…

The heart of entrepreneurship and development is initiative. The nemesis is bureaucratic red tape. Each has a purpose. The one to conquer scarcity in the world and provide for our desires. The other to establish boundaries to work within, to protect people from each other. The one the beating engine of the world, the other the suffocating confines in which it runs.

Dalton Township is a developing area. Large companies like Michigan’s Adventure and Duck Creek RV Park are doing additions. Smaller businesses like The Scoop ice cream shop and the Full Moon Diner and Saloon have recently opened. Things…

Here we go again. The subject is ethics this time.

I don’t particularly like how this first question is phrased, because it doesn’t make the problem plain. Nevertheless, I won’t write an article on the bad phrasing. I’ll just tackle the problem at hand.

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‘According to Hume, reason alone does not move us to act, though our moral opinions do, and he rightly infers from this that reason cannot be the source of our moral opinions.’ Discuss.

Hume rightly points out that the human capacity for reason is a powerful faculty. We can…

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. What is truth? How do we know? Important and difficult questions that will be debated as long as there are humans with the ability to debate them. The two questions that I have to answer today are a subset of this larger topic.

Here are the two questions that I have to tackle.

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‘If knowledge is not justified true belief, is it justified true belief that meets also some further condition?’

‘Is saying “I believe that p” just an alternative way of saying “p”?’

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Winning is often the end of an endeavor, but not always. In politics winning should not be an end in itself, only a step. It is the beginning of the true struggle for which the entire history of humanity has striven.

There is a balance to be struck. The balance between the value of the group and the value of the individual. Often people like to side with the one or the other, because both are simple solutions. But the plain fact is that there is no group without the individual. So too there would be no individual person without…

I did an Ancestry DNA test a few years ago and ended up finding an older sister a few states over.

My mother, father, and I have taken different approaches to giving her and her family gifts. I’ve sent books, of course, and so did my mother. But, they didn’t get an enthusiastic reception. And books are about 90 percent of my gift-giving.

Then my mother took my idea of giving out events as gifts and started applying it. I like doing that because I then go to the event with them. I make sure that I get one I’ll…