An idea does not become an action unless the individual actor believes that the idea is worth acting on.

That's a sentence from this article.  Here's the end of that paragraph:

To subjugate another human being, or to condone or allow the subjugation of one by another, one must first have the idea of subjugation and must believe that acting on it is preferable to ignoring or condemning it. Scarcity and natural death need no such human consent. The old saying about death and taxes turns out to be only half true.

Here's another good quote:

The Chinese army fired on their fellow citizens in Tiananmen Square. This massacre was not caused by political leaders and generals saying, “Shoot”; but by men in the Chinese army deciding to shoot. It was not caused ultimately by bad leadership, but by a belief in the necessity of obeying orders. There will always be people with a will to power; a desire to control. Only when the rest don’t believe that power to be necessary and therefore do not obey does freedom reign.

If Unilateral Disarmament is good for me

then it's good for government.

Oops!  They're coming for me.

Two good books to read in juxtaposition

H.G. Well's A Short History of the World.  A book to which I have misattributed the quote, "Grown men do not need leaders."  I'm pretty sure he's the one who said that, but it wasn't in that book.  Maybe it was the Outline of History.

The other book is The Wizards of Ozymandias, by Butler Shaffer.

And Mayam Bialik is better

than 99.999% of the rest of us. 

Admit it. 

She and her husband are doing it right; the rest of us did it wrong.  Follow her example.

Link.

Parents need to read this

Ask Dr. Sears.  Here's the blurb on the Discipline and Behavior page.

Discipline is more about building the right relationship with your child than using the right techniques. You want to put into place a guidance system that keeps the child in check at age four and keeps his behavior on track at age forty, and you want this system to be integrated into the child's whole personality, a part of him or her.

Here you can find what he thinks of spanking.  There are two other articles in that section that I think are pretty good, too.