thoughts in and out of season
I’m about half-way through Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Peru (available free online). It’s a great book from the great age of New England letters. His account is still considered quite accurate, or so it seems, and he presents it in the form of a clear, vivid and impartial narrative based on the … More ...
Steve Sailer notes something notable:
… More ...In the past, typically, happy talk was the style of the insecure middle of the social scale. Those who wished to be seen as above status concerns espoused frankness … A really odd thing about American culture today, however, is that as you go up the educational and social
I’ve noted that an implicit motivation for promoting mass third-world immigration is divide et impera: as Federalist 10 makes clear, the more people, and the more diverse they are, the higher the position of those on top and the less likely those down below will be able to get together and cause problems … More ...
A study from the Barna Group has turned up some interesting info on the numbers, lifestyles and self-perceptions of American atheists and agnostics, and how they contrast with those of active Christians. The most striking findings are:
Back in the ’60s people used to go off to look for America. The idea was that you’d drive your car across the country or hitch a ride on a freight train with your guitar or something and then you’d meet the people and find out how wonderful and democratic America is or whatever. Off … More ...
I’ve been reading some intellectual and cultural history lately, James H. Billington’s The Icon and the Axe and part of Vernon Louis Parrington’s The Beginnings of Critical Realism in America 1860-1920.
I’m an American who knows very little about Russia. That might be one reason I thought the Billington book on Russia was really … More ...
A recent philosophy grad asks about the Euthyphro Dilemma (so called from the Platonic dialogue), and whether it shows that religion and morality are unrelated:
… More ...The dilemma is as follows: is good simply whatever God commands us to do, or is there some external standard of goodness that God must adhere to when he
The Senate immigration bill has been fended off and seems likely to die. It remains the case, however, that very few people in positions of public influence or responsibility want to enforce restraints on immigration, and in a country as large and complex as the United States it’s hard to force something to happen if … More ...
I’ve always thought that surveys showing that more formal education means more liberal social views and less religion are chiefly a sign that formal education is a system for inculcating the outlook of formal public institutions, and thus for disrupting informal traditions and ordinary conclusions from daily experience. That view is now supported by a … More ...
A reader writes:
… More ...I just graduated from Haverford College, a liberal Quaker school outside of Philadelphia. A few years ago, two students dressed as black pop-stars went to a Halloween party wearing brown face paint. They were punished, pretty much for hate speech, on the grounds that even though they didn’t intend to offend people,