thoughts in and out of season
For the sake of fairness I ought to include a white male (one who’s not yet dead) in my gallery of intellectual corruption and psychological disorder in academia. So here’s a piece from British philosopher A. C. Grayling in which he gives views on Christianity and European history that in manner and substance qualify him … More ...
A few days ago I called Houston Baker a “thuggish hack,” and mentioned him as an example of “the lost honor of academia.” It seems to me that the information readily available on the internet supports those views (examples can be found here and here). Still, I was struck by how bad his situation … More ...
How come “anarchotyranny”
only appears 39 times in the Google index?
UPDATE: Good news: “anarcho-tyranny” appears 15,000 times. Still not enough, but better than 39!
To expand on the topic a little, the expression—however spelled—refers to a state of society in which government goes after nontraditional offenses like racism more vigorously … More ...
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 ...