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…
Having listened to some 100 hours of “rabbi” Jonathan Haidt I’ve come to this conclusion. (Yes, the usual scratched record names will be proffered along with the activist wannabes, but their time is now over, and long overdue at that — advocacy is not inquiry!). Haidt has the empirical credentials, the philosophical credentials and equally importantly he…
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…
In a crowded field of public intellectuals, John McWhorter stands head and shoulders above most. He has a genuine commitment to the Socratic method (i.e. intellectual honesty), never peddling an over-rehearsed hardened position that he’s been married to since the year dot. One always feels that he really values the provisionality of intellectual discourse and is always…
A nuanced and civil discussion with Glenn Loury and John McWhorter — the best discussion I’ve come across on this issue yet. bloggingheadsfree speechGlenn Louryidentity politicsJohn McWhorterLiberal educationliberalitypolitical correctnessracismsocial identitysocial justicevirtue signalling
That Wendell Berry takes on the campus commissars (and their complicitous willingly martyred cannon-fodder individual manqué bidders) offers some inkling of hope for preserving liberality. But I fear we are just entering the beginnings of a Darkness at Noon moment — the prospect of a total eclipse is immanent. Check out Orwell’s article on Koestler’s Darkness at Noon reprinted…
Astonished to see that my Amy Winehouse: The Album Collection comes with one these most grievous of offenses against taste and decency and liberality. Frank . . . our culture is still being infantilized and no doubt has supporters from both the illiberal Left and the illiberal Right — the “central scrutinizers” of Joe’s Garage. “Explicit…
Jonathan Haidt annotates Campbell and Manning’s “Microaggression and moral cultures”. (The phenomenon of campus victimhood has, in my view, being going on for a good thirty years). The key idea is that the new moral culture of victimhood fosters “moral dependence” and an atrophying of the ability to handle small interpersonal matters on one’s own.…
Aron strikes me as the very model of a responsible intellectual, a social philosopher of intellectual power and prudence who served his society with great courage and considerable style. — John A. Hall. The Importance of Being Civil: The Struggle for Political Decency, Princeton University Press, 2013, p. 105 Couldn’t put it better. Take a moment…
If you would like to be among the first to learn about the exciting future of the Canadian Motion Picture Distribution Industry and how it will positively benefit the National Film Production Economy . . . You are cordially invited to attend the official mediAm launch presentation to be held at the Nat and Flora…
manwithoutqualities 