Counter-Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau claimed that in moral society, one “coalesces with all, in this each of us puts in common his person and his whole power under the supreme direction of society’s leaders.” And: A “citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.” Further: […]
When he became an American citizen in 1943, Sergei Rachmaninoff said: “This is the only place on earth where a human being is respected for what he is and what he does, and it does not matter who he is and where he came from.” Related: “How Rachmaninoff’s composing was hurt by the Soviet Union.”
Rachmaninoff upon becoming an American citizen Read More »
My Savvy Street article, “The Battle for the Soul of the University is Raging,” was translated into Hebrew by Shahar Shlush and published here. “The protesters and disrupters may be angry, but they are adults who know what they are doing. ‘Cry-bullies’ is half-right, as the tears are a tactic.”
Hebrew translation of *The Battle for the Soul of the University is Raging* Read More »
At the TRAC 2014 conference in Ventura, California (“The Aesthetics of 21st Century”), I participated in a panel discussion on talks presented by philosopher Roger Scruton and artist Odd Nerdrum. Scruton spoke of Beauty and Nerdrum spoke of Kitsch. My comments in response run for 18 minutes, beginning at the 40:16 mark, following a quick
Comments on Roger Scruton and Odd Nerdrum Read More »
My “How to Tame Religious Terrorists” is now republished at Britain’s Church and State site: “Any fight is triggered by short-term, local disagreements. But long-term, generalized conflicts are always about abstract principles in collision. As with neo-Nazis, Communist revolutionaries, violent environmentalists, bomb-the-government anarchists and others – our conflicts with them are intellectual in origin. “Terrorism
“How to Tame Religious Terrorists” [CHURCH and STATE] Read More »
From philosopher Sidney Hook’s autobiographical Out of Step, on his authoritarian schooling in early 20th-century New York: “Although the public schools were religiously attended (children feared the wrath of their parents much more than the threats of the truant officer), the classroom experience was far more enjoyable. First of all, the discipline was exacting. Our
Sidney Hook’s school days in old New York Read More »
By diversity I mean the intellectual kind. Numerous surveys (e.g., here and here) show that university faculties lean left, often far left in humanities departments. A purely democratic argument says Yes, politicians should force diversity. Government-funded universities are paid for with tax monies, and in a democracy politicians are responsible to their constituents to ensure
Should politicians force diversity at universities? Read More »
[Revised from this earlier post.] When the great Polish intellectual Leszek Kolakowski (1927-2009) published “My Correct Views on Everything,” he was responding to Edward Thompson’s attack in “Open Letter to Leszek Kolakowski.” Kolakowski is best known for Main Currents of Marxism, his huge survey of Marxism from its neo-Platonic and Hegelian roots, on through Marx
True Believers against Leftist Responsibility — Kolakowski versus Thompson Read More »
I’m reading Daniel Guérin’s The Brown Plague: Travels in Late Weimar and Early Nazi Germany (Duke University Press, 1994), based on the French journalist’s trips through Germany in the early 1930s. Guérin was then a young leftist whose thinking later evolved in a communist-anarchist direction. Germany both attracted and appalled him with its extremist politics. From
Guerin’s travels in late Weimar and early Nazi Germany Read More »
In 2016, Mark Michael Lewis interviewed me on a variety of topics, including the pronoun wars. At that point, Professor Jordan Peterson had recently taken a strong public stand against being required to use some newly proposed pronouns, and that refusal had generated controversy. Here is the transcript of my four-minute opinion on Peterson and
Hicks on Pronouns and Peterson — transcript Read More »