Coursera woos me to MOOC through my college email. I haven’t succumbed yet, but only because they haven’t offered anything interesting enough. I signed up for one course on logic, but backed out after clarification over the goal of the course which was to prove through logic . . . . Continue Reading »
1. So I’ll tell you about Ralph’s great conference later. 2. Well, one thing now: Russell Hittinger, who gave a fine lecture on Catholic defenses of marriage and the family against the modern state’s various efforts (beginning with the French Revolution) to reduce people to . . . . Continue Reading »
The New York Times, maybe not unsurprisingly, recruits subscribers through college emails with the offer of limited free access. Today’s offering, from the cover of Sunday’s Book Review brought the headline, Sex and God at Yale , by Nathan Harden, from a review titled, . . . . Continue Reading »
Is that fair? Conservatives in academia will not find this surprising, I think. According to Scott Jasick, in “Admitting to Bias” in this morning’s Inside Higher Education , there is a very distinct bias in all aspects of academia, including, naturally, hiring. Just . . . . Continue Reading »
No Child Left Behind is one of those laws made like a Bismarckian sausage. The more the public knew what was in it, the more unappealing it was and difficult to swallow, politically. The idea of some such legislation was proposed by President George W. Bush in January of 2001. . . . . Continue Reading »
At one time the website Front Porch Republic stood as a shining light, celebrating an open and public discussion of the limits of government, the intrinsic necessity of conceiving of ‘place’ in the human drama, and the acknowledgement of ‘liberty’ as a requirement . . . . Continue Reading »
Ralph presents his case against Rawls below. Although I agree with much of it, I think he goes too far. Here are a few rather disordered suggestions intended less to vindicate Rawls than to complicate the picture: 1. We need to distinguish between Rawls an sich (as it were) and what Ralph describes . . . . Continue Reading »
Since a new survey of political theorists has confirmed the towering, unrivaled reputation of John Rawls, allow me to state briefly why this thralldom is a disaster for political philosophy. Prof. Lawler is of course right that Rawls is boring, but he’s getting bigger rather than going . . . . Continue Reading »
A brief item of self-promotion: PoMoCon readers who happen to understand Dutch may be interested in a new volume, Conservatieve Vooruitgang recently published by Prometheus. It’s a greatest-hits tour of 20th century conservative thought, with an emphasis on libertarian, pluralist, and . . . . Continue Reading »
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Norman Podhoretz emerged from semi-retirement to express his approval for Sarah Palin . No, I don’t propose to revisit the Sarah, pro- and con- debate, which will remain sterile and tedious until she actually, like, runs for something (or not). But I . . . . Continue Reading »
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