Headlines of the Week (Or Whatever)

This week, I'm thinking about privilege. Okay well really, I'm always thinking about privilege but this week I'm linking about privilege. Haha.
 
On Privilege

The Distress of the Privileged

THE ETHICS OF LIVING JIM CROW: An Autobiographical Sketch

Whites Believe They Are Victims of Racism More Often Than Blacks: In Zero Sum Game, "Reverse Racism" Seen as Bigger Problem than Anti-Black Racism

Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is

Facts are Cool: In Support of Straight White Male

What We Aren’t Talking About When We Talk About ‘White Privilege’

On Hobbes and Locke

From my weekly comments for Honors Colloquium II:

“As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost.”                    ―Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The ideas of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes are really very interesting, especially in regards to how different they are, and yet with such similar conclusions. Locke saw Man as a social creature, whereas Hobbes saw Man as a solitary creature. Locke believed in the inherent goodness of man, while Hobbes believes that the natural lives of men would be ‘poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. Locke believed in an intrinsic sense of ethics within the souls of men, while Hobbes saw morality as the will of a ruler, forced upon the people. Most importantly, Locke believed in natural rights, independent of a government, while Hobbes believed that any rights allowed come from the state itself. However different the works of these two men, together they make up makes up one solid set of ideas known as ‘social contract theory’, wherein people implicitly consent to a set of common rules and authority in exchange for protection. Despite the diversity of the ideas of Hobbes and Locke, they are the foundation of our government, which is a very interesting idea.