thoughts in and out of season
A friend writes:
… More ...You have this vision of liberalism or modernity as the attempt to create a self-sufficient manmade system which becomes a substitute for the given world, I wonder if you have any thoughts about how computers fit into that scheme. For many people the computer becomes a substitute for the real world. It
Hate-filled bigots have been stopped dead in their tracks: an organization had been sending families of fallen soldiers and policemen medallions with a picture of the Liberty Bell and the quotations “Liberty Rings For All Nations” and “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” On the reverse they had been putting the man’s name and the … More ...
British law, like U.S. law. requires the physical reconstruction of the universe so handicaps are no longer handicaps. Failure to do the necessary reconstruction is strictly forbidden as a violation of fundamental human decency. That’s what laws against “discrimination” on the basis of disability are all about.
Such laws are yet another glorious social … More ...
A review of Diane Ravitch’s The Language Police in The New Pantagruel brings out the nature of “celebrating diversity” in school textbooks: since almost anything one might assert, suggest or mention would be more favorable to one group or culture than another, the only things that can be asserted, suggested or mentioned are things like … More ...
This discussion by Ludwig von Mises of capitalism, happiness, and beauty has something of the “one simple principle correctly resolves everything” quality that tends to disfigures libertarian thought, so it’s no credit to the Mises Institute that they’ve chosen to give it special prominence.
The issue is artistic life under “capitalism,” by which I suppose … More ...
A recent article at Front Page helps put Brigitte Bardot’s crime in context by touching on some of the non-hate speech Arab networks are now broadcasting in France with the consent of the French government. Recent contributions to the richness of French multiculturalism include a dramatization of Jews using the blood of a ritually slaughtered … More ...
Speaking of cynical propaganda, has anyone noticed how bizarre and effective the BP logo is? When you go by one of their gas stations you really are convinced that what they do is Green, Solar, Euro, and in fact Beyond Petroleum—totally different from what those gross American gas companies do. What does it mean that … More ...
Here’s a rather frightening article on Stalin at the movies. One interesting detail is that Soviet agents may well have been told to assassinate John Wayne. Another is that cynical propagandists end up believing what they see on the screen, just like other people. When Stalin saw a movie about an admiral of Catherine … More ...
The Washington Post deserves credit for publishing this article. The article reveals that researchers all say it’s extremely unlikely that stem cells will ever do anything for Alzheimer’s—they just don’t say it very loudly. It’s worth keeping stories like this in mind. People want to be able to trust experts. They resist thinking of … More ...
When assigning responsibility for the misconduct at Abu Ghraib prison it’s odd to have to choose between Lynndie England and Donald Rumsfeld. I thought the normal thing when something goes very wrong in a military unit was to hold the officer in charge responsible. In this case that would be Janis Karpinski, who was in … More ...