February 19, 2009 – 11:24 pm
There is quite a ruction today about Attorney General Eric Holder’s calling America “a nation of cowards” for its reticence to speak frankly about race (transcript here). I wonder what he really means, and what he really wants. At the very least, it seems a tad atrabilious for the nation’s first black attorney general — […]
January 29, 2009 – 1:01 am
The little dust-up following Monday’s post was not, I’m afraid, this site’s finest hour, and I certainly take responsibility for doing a poor job as moderator. I had written the post during the day and evening Sunday, and put it up on Monday around lunchtime. There were a few responses early on, but I was […]
January 26, 2009 – 3:47 pm
A few days ago Dennis Mangan posted at his website, Mangan’s Miscellany, some remarks of mine about a notion he had been discussing: the restriction of immigration on the basis of race. This gave rise to a long comment-thread. The comments were of varying quality, but nearly universal in their agreement that anyone who might […]
January 22, 2009 – 10:31 pm
OK, waka wakans, I can use a hand here. I am once again working till at least midnight, and have no time for a post. But I would like it if you would visit this thread at Dennis Mangan’s, where I am alone under heavy fire, and have no time to respond. Go forth, and […]
January 20, 2009 – 11:25 am
Looking back over my 52 years, I must say I cannot recall anything like the giddy euphoria attending today’s inauguration. Perhaps the mood was something like this in January of 1961, but if so I was too young to remember, and anyway I doubt it. Certainly I don’t remember pilgrims descending on Washington in their […]
January 17, 2009 – 10:36 pm
We remarked with sadness the other day upon the death of actor Patrick McGoohan, star of the 1960s TV series Danger Man, Secret Agent, and The Prisoner. Our old friend David Pauley wrote in today with a link to this thoughtful essay about McGoohan’s icy appeal.
January 13, 2009 – 10:53 pm
We’ve been hearing for years how dangerous it is to talk on cell phones while driving, and many states have made doing so illegal. While I can easily see how distracting it can be to fumble with the device itself behind the wheel, I’ve always thought that merely talking on a cell phone, particularly a […]
January 7, 2009 – 12:00 am
New York City is a crowded, chaotic place. The public transit is bad and getting worse, and the weather is, generally, awful. Housing is cramped and expensive. The Mets and Jets collapse, like clockwork, year after year. But there are times when I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. This evening the lovely Nina and […]
January 4, 2009 – 11:20 pm
I have said often in these pages that it seems likely that the human propensity for religion is a cognitive adaptation that has flourished because it tends to improve the cohesion of social groups, thereby increasing the fitness of those groups in competition against others. As David Sloan Wilson argues in his book Darwin’s Cathedral: […]
December 29, 2008 – 1:58 pm
Our friend Jess Kaplan has sent us a link to an article in the Wall Street Journal informing us that according to a prominent Russian political analyst, the U.S. is about to fall apart.
December 28, 2008 – 10:52 pm
The debate continues at Mangan’s; the issue is whether one can genuinely be interested in conserving the virtues of Western society while at the same time publicly questioning the truth of the central claims of Christianity. The Christians in the conversation would, unsurprisingly, like us to agree that Western civilization is essentially and inextricably bound […]
December 26, 2008 – 11:42 pm
In a comment to a recent post, reader Greg Estren raised a question that has been implicit here for quite some time. Should we encourage religious belief, even if we think religion’s claims are false? We asked this same question, regarding the notion of objective moral truths, back in September: are these beliefs genuinely necessary […]
December 24, 2008 – 12:10 am
If you have gone to look at the post and comment thread about Christianity over at Dennis Mangan’s, you will have seen that Dennis, an unbeliever who considers himself a conservative, must confront the assertion put to him by Lawrence Auster: that it is simply not consistent to be both a conservative defender of Western […]
December 15, 2008 – 11:54 pm
Dividing my time, as I do, between New York City and Wellfleet, MA, I hang with a pretty liberal crowd. In social settings, if the conversation gets round to politics, human nature, economics, religious pluralism, or a number of other topics, it’s pretty much given that at some point I am going to be glared […]
December 14, 2008 – 2:21 pm
Making the rounds at my office last week was a video clip about the exponential pace of technological change. To the accompaniment of an urgent techno-pop soundtrack, in an onimous minor key, it presents a series of factoids illustrating the implosion of accustomed time-frames, giving the viewer the impression that the acceleration of technological, social, […]
December 9, 2008 – 9:29 pm
Here’s an item I meant to mention a few days ago. Published on December 5th, the 75th anniversary of Prohibition’s repeal, it is an eloquent call for an end to our nation’s misguided war on drugs. While our neighbor to the south sinks into violent anarchy, and the Taliban enriches itself producing opium, we continue […]
December 7, 2008 – 8:41 pm
Reader JK, who has his ear to the ground at all times, alerts us to some worrisome news. Apparently the prevalence in the environment of certain chemical pollutants has reached such high levels that a broad assortment of vertebrate species are producing increasingly “feminized” males.
November 30, 2008 – 11:09 pm
I do hope readers will forgive me for rather a rambling post yesterday. (My editorial staff was off for the holidays.) I think some clarification is in order. The post was written as part of an ongoing discussion of the appropriate limits of tolerance. I have been upbraided on occasion for discussing certain topics, particularly […]
November 29, 2008 – 5:02 pm
In a challenging and thoughtful comment on our recent post about tolerance, our reader Addofio chides me for the disdainful tone I have taken in some of my criticism of religion. She recommends that we discuss ideas, however preposterously absurd, in emotionally neutral terms, as a gesture of respect for the people who hold them. […]
November 25, 2008 – 10:50 am
In today’s news, we read that pirates have seized yet another ship off the Somali coast. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens asks why we no longer hang pirates when we catch them. A fair question, I think.
November 25, 2008 – 12:30 am
I tend to rail about religion now and then; some of you may have noticed. I’ve even suggested that we’d all, in the long run, simply be better off without it. Such remarks tend to evoke indignant responses, in which I am tartly reminded of the value of “tolerance”. But I must say that I […]
November 22, 2008 – 6:59 pm
As I mentioned last night, there’s a discussion underway about interreligious dialogue at Kevin Kim’s place. The thread began with Kevin’s link to an article about Karen Armstrong’s call for worldwide interreligious harmony. I’ve been taking fire for my flint-hearted remarks, and would like to comment further here.
November 15, 2008 – 10:04 pm
I recently began a careful re-reading of Blaise Pascal’s Pensées, a book I had not looked at closely in decades. The work is primarily an argument for Pascal’s Jansenist Christian beliefs, but prepares the soil with a searching review of Man’s transience and wretchedness. The genius Pascal, in his cruelly foreshortened life, acquired wisdom far […]
November 13, 2008 – 10:09 pm
I managed to get home from work by eight-fifteen this evening, which, in the context of the past week, feels like playing hooky. The little grey cells, however, are in weary and mutinous disarray, so I will probably be leaning on the “Shameless Filler” category for another few days. But I do want to direct […]
November 8, 2008 – 7:20 pm
Last night we had friends over for dinner, a lovely couple we know from Wellfleet. They are both academics: she is a sociologist and associate professor at Harvard. Naturally we were discussing the recently transformed political landscape, and the conversation turned to Mr. Obama’s possible choices for the composition of his cabinet. Among the names […]
November 7, 2008 – 12:31 am
I note with sorrow the success of Proposition 8 in California, which will amend the state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriages. Of all the threats that imperil us in these uncertain times, that this is what they chose to focus on is a depressing comment indeed.
November 4, 2008 – 7:19 pm
I know I said I would shut up about Sarah Palin, and I will, sort of. But Christopher Hitchens is under no such obligation, and he wrote a tart little item a few days ago. We read:
November 3, 2008 – 11:56 pm
We’ve heard a lot lately about anti-intellectualism. The word “intellectual” often evokes, it seems, negative associations even in people who could fairly be called intellectuals themselves; we’ve even seen some of that in recent discussions here. Why?
October 28, 2008 – 11:51 pm
From a commenter over at Gypsy Scholar (by way of our reader JK) comes a link to an article by George Monbiot entitled “How these gibbering numbskulls came to dominate Washington”: How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of […]
October 26, 2008 – 9:55 pm
Following on from yesterday’s post, I’d like to look more closely at the matter of potentiality. As mentioned previously, the argument put forward by Bill Vallicella in his discussion of abortion at The Maverick Philosopher is that from the moment of conception the zygote has the potential to become a fully developed adult, a rights-possessing […]
October 25, 2008 – 2:17 pm
As mentioned in our previous post, there is a discussion ongoing at The Maverick Philosopher on the subject of abortion. The argument put forward (see yesterday’s post for a very brief synopsis) is that a fertilized zygote has the potentiality to become a fully developed, rights-possessing adult — and, in virtue of that, should be […]
October 23, 2008 – 11:35 pm
Over at his website The Maverick Philosopher, Dr. William Vallicella has been puting together a philosophical defense of the pro-life position based on an argument from the potential personhood of the conceptus. His argument runs as follows: 1. We ascribe the right to life to neonates and young children on the basis of their potentialities. […]
October 23, 2008 – 11:24 pm
A while back we offered a link to videos of a conference called Beyond Belief. It featured talks by an outstanding panel of thinkers — most of them Godless heathens — about the growing scientific understanding of religion as a biological and anthropological phenomenon, and about the alarming role still played by faith and superstition […]
October 16, 2008 – 1:02 am
In Wednesday’s Times was a depressing article about the prevalence and persistence of racism and lowbrow religious fundamentalism in the American South. Combined with a proudly anti-intellectual ignorance, and the hair-trigger tradition of violence in the name of “honor” that is the legacy of herdsmen-descended cultures everywhere on Earth, it all makes for a grotesquely […]
October 10, 2008 – 11:24 pm
It’s 11:15 p.m., and the first free moment I’ve had all day. But although there’s much to discuss, I’m just too worn out. So instead I will direct you to another worthwhile column by David Brooks. In today’s essay he looks at the lamentable cult of anti-intellectualism that has hijacked the American conservative movement. Can […]
October 8, 2008 – 10:43 pm
Every four years we hear a lot about “red states” and “blue states”, and see a lot of correspondingly decorated maps. I wonder who picked the colors, and how people feel about them. I much prefer blue to red myself; I see red as being a restless, angry color, and blue as cool, thoughtful, and […]
September 24, 2008 – 11:34 pm
I’ve had my differences with Maverick Philosopher Bill Vallicella over the past few years — he can be an obstinate cuss, and we have divergent views on a variety of topics. But I’ve always admired his intelligence, scholarship, and the quality of his writing — and joining the conversation at his philosophical salon has appreciably […]
September 23, 2008 – 12:20 am
The good ship Britannia, with hull stove in and gunwales awash, slips slowly beneath the waves. Writing bravely from her deck, our friend, the estimable Deogolwulf, vouchsafes us a poignant glimpse of that mighty vessel in her mortal throes. Here.
September 13, 2008 – 10:43 pm
As always, there is a provocative exhange of views taking place over at the website Edge.org. It began with an essay by the psychologist Jonathan Haidt entitled Why Do People Vote Republican?
September 7, 2008 – 12:06 am
In a comment to a recent post, reader David Brightly asked if I was worried that naturalistic accounts of morality “might lead to less good and more harm being done.” It’s a good question, and I am not sure about the answer.
September 1, 2008 – 10:51 pm
There is an organization, which I expect most of you have heard of by now, called “the The Brights“. It is dedicated to the promotion of what it calls a “naturalistic worldview”, which it defines as being free of “supernatural and mystical elements”. The name, I think, is exceedingly unfortunate; it seems smug and pollyanna-ish, […]
August 30, 2008 – 11:55 pm
“Baron Bodissey”, at Gates of Vienna, mans the ramparts against creeping socialism in a clear and forceful post. An excerpt: A basic rule for the classical liberal is that government should perform as few functions as possible, and that taxes should be kept as low as possible, in order to eliminate the corruption and non-productive […]
August 30, 2008 – 2:46 pm
Here, courtesy of the Drudge Report, is a link to a blog post and video clip in which we see the pinguid pinko propagandist Michael Moore gloating at the approach of Hurricane Gustav. Caring not a fig for the human and economic impact of the impending storm — which is sure to be considerable, and […]
August 24, 2008 – 10:21 pm
It’s late in the day, and it’s been a long, full day: up early this morning to drive our son back to college, then an evening memorial service here in Wellfleet for a truly remarkable woman — Ellen Rafel, our next-door neighbor here on Hiram Hill, who lost her fight with cancer this spring. So […]
August 12, 2008 – 10:04 pm
I watched a little of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics the other day. It was an elaborate spectacle, and quite beautiful: an enormous troupe of drummers, identically clad, playing and dancing in perfect unison. There may well have been thousands of them; there were at least many hundreds.
We’ve been giving morality, and the universality of moral intuitions, a good going over lately (particularly in this discussion, which now has over 100 comments). Readers with an interest in this topic might like to have a look at Harvard University’s Moral Sense Test. Feel free to share your thoughts here. Note: Don’t read the […]
Don’t like having your freedoms infringed? Worried about the economy? Forget the Patriot Act and the credit crisis; here comes the EPA.
In today’s Times, John Tierney calls our attention to the possibility that the government may soon be imposing “Title IX” requirements on university science departments, because there aren’t “enough” women going into fields like physics and engineering. This is dangerous territory, of course; we all remember the shameful pillorying of Harvard president Lawrence Summers for […]
Feeling tired? Listless? Maybe all you need is some concentrated water. Just add water.
Democracy has obvious drawbacks, not least of which being that at its worst it is nothing more than mob rule. As William Alger said, “a crowd always thinks with its sympathy, never with its reason.” So the leader of a democracy, depending upon his aims and his talents, can seek to lead by addressing his […]