Very roughly analogous to the corrosive effects that the internet has been to our out-of-touch and typically regressive gatekeepers, so too was VHS the corrodent to the Romanian communist state. Now, as then, these gatekeepers entertain the shallowest of insights into the dynamics of situated moral psychology, deluded by their lazy rationalistic disparaging of “low brow” culture, the elites of all…
Decency was his hallmark Today marks six years since my chum Rob Haskell’s death — his obit here. Rob was at the forefront of academic freedom/free speech 20 years ago. Not surprisingly, this kind, generous and open-minded academic was treated very shabbily by the lily–livered and bulling commissar regressives — they were out to get…
Released 50 years ago. Frank would roll in his grave knowing that the Brain Police are their most powerful right now. In the ’80s they were primarily daft pearl-clutching Washington Wives (abetted by the so-called “Moral Majority”/ in the UK we had Mary Whitehouse). But thanks to Frank we had some push back because these pearl-clutchers weren’t the sharpest pencils in…
Is a group a bland puree unless it includes a “critical mass” of the targeted minorities? Peter Minowitz’ newly published and freely available paper in Perspectives on Political Science. . . . as if colorful skin guarantees colorful thinking and white skin precludes it . . . Identity politics and affirmative action may well have met a…
Play it again and again Sam. The first hour of this podcast focuses on Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and the political implications of the recent terrorist attack in Orlando. Podcast #38 — The End of Faith Sessions 2 beliefcoherence theory of truthcollective beliefconceptual analysisepistemology of religious belieffree speechilliberalismislamLiberalismneurosciencePhilosophyregressive leftReligionreligion and sciencesam harris
She asked for my love and I gave her a dangerous mind Now she’s stupid in the street and she can’t socialise — Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) One really has to be skeptical of the extensional and intensional adequacy of the concepts under discussion (this over and above the standard political labels of mutual…
The Smart Set — great to have CP renter the “fray”. Free speech was a primary weapon of the Left against the moralism and conformism of the Right. How then, we must ask, has campus Leftism in the U.S. been so transformed that it now encourage, endorses, and celebrates the suppression of ideas, including those that…
Though it’s going on 40 years since Performance was made (1968, released in 1970) it is still the most modern of films with “adult themes” (philosophical and otherwise) from an age when films weren’t primarily made for fuckwits. The themes of social, sexual and gender identity make the fuss being made about these issues now seem so tired…
Steven Nadler writes in Aeon that “At a time of religious zealotry, Spinoza’s fearless defence of intellectual freedom is more timely than ever.” This fundamental liberal value is of course foreign to the regressive left. In his distress over the deteriorating political situation in the Dutch Republic, and despite the personal dantheoger he faced, Spinoza…
Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity: Confronting the Fear of Knowledge. Universities, once at the forefront of campaigns for intellectual liberty, are now bastions of conformity. This provocative book traces the demise of academic freedom within the context of changing ideas about the purpose of the university and the nature of knowledge and is a passionate…
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