Society and culture

In an age of checklists, decision trees, and zero tolerance, it’s a puzzling notion.

People think it means giving up on reason. Or doing what’s been done no matter what. Or accepting an external authority that has nothing to do with the situation we’re actually dealing with.

What else could it mean, when each of us has his own thoughts and goals, reason is a matter of studies and statistics, and social authority is either following rules we’ve agreed to for our own purposes, or getting someone else’s demands shoved down our throat?

Paul Gottfried has some comments on my post on shrinks and hipster liberalism that raise several interesting points: is the social outlook found among the modish half-educated young an organic development or an intentional construction? Can we can do something about it and the broader stream of advanced liberalism of which it is part? And if something can be done, what’s the key?

Inclusiveness tells us that characteristics that traditionally define personal identity have no legitimate social role. If my specific identity as a man or member of a particular people is connected to my position in the world, that’s intolerable and something has to be done about it.

That can’t be the end of the story. We are social beings, and we identify ourselves by our social position. We need to know who we are so we can know how to act. For that reason suppressing traditional identities by enforced equality only brings in new forms of identity that are allowed to be functional and unequal.

From an egalitarian standpoint, it’s all a pointless exercise.

An old friend asked me to contribute something to an issue of the Mensa Research Journal he was guest-editing on the topic of “Barriers to Educating the Gifted” (vol. 40, No. 2; summer 2009). Here’s the result, plus or minus a few footnotes and editorial fiddles:

“Our children are our future.” 
“A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
“Human ingenuity is our greatest resource.”
“In America we believe in education.”

I found the to-do over the New York Post “chimp” cartoon unbelievably depressing.

The idea that there are all those racists out there is extremely useful to some people. It explains why black people have problems and our rulers have the right to rule us. They are, after all, morally superior, and the rest of us have to be restrained from the horrible things we’re itching to do.

At a friend’s suggestion I watched a bit of the Lehrer News Hour last night. He had a couple of think-tank types on, a guy from the Rand Corporation and a lady from somewhere or other, who were saying we had to show everyone we had a commitment to stay in Afghanistan for the long haul, until a strong central government could become established.

My excellent American adventure continues with George M. Marsden’s The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief—not the whole book, but enough to get the picture.

I just finished (more or less) another book on my Americana reading list, Bill Kauffman’s Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism. It’s a straightforward book that uses lots of examples to make the obvious points that conservative locally-minded people mostly don’t like foreign adventures, and that war and empire aren’t good for the conservative locally-minded way of life.

To follow up on recent discussions of America and Americanism I’ve been reading a couple of books: Tom Woods’ The Church Confronts Modernity: Catholic Intellectuals and the Progressive Era and T. J. Jackson Lears’ No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920 . Both are well-written, well-informed, and well worth a look.

What do I like and dislike about America?

It’s hard to comment. It’s like asking what I think about life, or the world. What do I like and dislike about 300,000,000 people from every conceivable background spread out over the better part of a continent?

And compared to what? Most of what’s good and bad in America can be found elsewhere as well.

Takimag has published a piece I wrote on social conservatism. Unfortunately, they no longer allow comments, which was always half the fun of publishing there.

The merest straw in the wind, but interesting nonetheless: Religious people have superior visual perception. It seems that Dutch Calvinist university students recognize embedded visual patterns faster than their atheist classmates.

A friend is guest-editing a special issue of some publication that will deal with problems of gifted and talented education. For some reason he asked me to contribute an article, and here’s an initial sketch that I plan to expand a great deal. Any comments at this point would be nonetheless welcome.

Gifted and Talented for What?

The most basic problem in gifted and talented education is what it’s for. That depends on the point of education in general. But what is that?

“Nostalgia” is frequently associated today with “racism”, “sexism”, and “homophobia”.