thoughts in and out of season
What must it be like working in a profession in which a pleasant out-of-her-depth fantasist like Elaine Pagels or a thuggish hack like Houston Baker (see this discussion) are named-chair superstars at top universities?
It appears that in Professor Pagels’ case there’s a certain amount of snickering, so academics don’t lose their critical abilities … More ...
Here are a couple of comments on another weblog that touch on something I wrote and raise a point worth discussing:
… More ...[Participant A:] There is a subtle, all pervasive form of control that perhaps has no precedent in human history. Like Orwell’s state, liberalism changes the way people view reality itself, it changes the language
I went to a conference this Saturday put on by some academics and noted (as one might expect) that there’s a definite orthodoxy that provides the assumed background for discussions. For my own purposes I decided to summarize the orthodoxy, and here’s what I came up with:
A standard jibe from proponents of “gay marriage” is that marriages don’t eat each other up, so John and Mary’s can’t be affected by Ron and Barry’s. As one blogger puts it, “I can’t help but feel sorry for people whose families are so fragile as to be destroyed by someone else’s decision to make … More ...
An example of how tolerance and diversity mean universal suppression: firemen forbidden to put pictures of loved ones, flags on lockers. Several weeks ago a sexually offensive slogan was found on the outside of a fireman’s locker. Management didn’t want it there—for starters, it could expose them to a lawsuit for sexual harassment—but … More ...
Der Untergang des Abendlandes seems to be accelerating:
Steve Sailer’s got a good article about bigshot Harvard social scientist Robert D. Putnam. Putnam’s the guy behind Bowling Alone, a famous article (and then book) that documented the decline of civc engagement in America. More recently, as Sailer details, he’s published a study showing that more ethnic diversity means less social trust, … More ...
For those who liked my gloom-and-doom entry last month, here’s something even gloomier and doomier from the late John Attarian: Requiem for the Right.
A quote from Le Corbusier that proves the man’s intelligence: “The core of our old cities, with their domes and cathedrals, must be broken up and skyscrapers put in their place.” (Cited in A Humane Economy, 85.) Say what you like, he knew his stuff. The urban environment is the setting for the rituals … More ...
On the face of it, these pro-homosexualists who don’t like “prejudice” have a point: Mixed message, and Two speeches, two days apart. If it’s true, as the Pope supposedly said, that we should all strive to “overcome preconceived ideas and prejudices, tear down barriers and eliminate contrasts that divide … so as to … More ...