thoughts in and out of season
Building on a foundation laid by the Massachusetts “gay marriage” decision, and perhaps the Larry Summers smackdown, some students at Harvard are working with an official university body to do something about the problem of heteronormativity—the tendency some people still have of speaking as if male-female relations set some sort of sexual standard. The … More ...
Have emperors always gone about in their new birthday suits? Maybe there are always contradictions between obvious realities and the official stories everybody reputable agrees to. Or maybe there’s something about an expertised formally educated mass-media society, in which something can only become a fact or issue if the right people recognize it as such, … More ...
Some notes, for whatever they’re worth:
More news from the inclusion, understanding and mutual respect front:
[url]http://www.petitiononline.com/ijg520/petition.html[/url]
I have mixed feelings about my old school, Dartmouth College. I had a good time there—it was a very pretty place, I met good people and was surrounded by good things, and it was a time of life when the whole world seemed to be opening up. Still, visits over the years and communications from … More ...
Here’s a Harvey Mansfield piece about the Larry Summers situation that’s worth reading. Since the issues are controversial, I suppose I should say that I think it perfectly obvious that men and women differ naturally in talents and inclinations, and that current views on the topic are evidence that something’s gone radically wrong with intellectual … More ...
More theorizing about the Episcopalian pathology, which is the same as the pathology of mainline religion today: Griswold’s Sermon is Revival of Gnosticism. What the writer means is that the religion that has become dominant among leading Episcopalians and many others has to do with acquiring a higher consciousness that dissolves all oppositions, including … More ...
I just finished reading John Courtney Murray’s We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition. Along with most of the other things Murray wrote it’s available online. He was a serious, intelligent and reflective man, and he deals with important issues, so the book’s well worth reading. I don’t have time … More ...
A correspondent wrote to ask whether I could explain concisely Kant’s influence on European thought. The short answer, of course, was “no.” Still, it’s good mental exercise to give a 25-words-or-less response to an impossibly complicated question that demands more knowledge than you’ll ever have. If nothing else, it helps clarify and order your thought. … More ...