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Index for this page...(Be aware some links below may have expired.)
Politics and the Ideals of Culture Some of you may be interested in a new essay by Tudor B. Munteanu: "Politics and the Ideals of Culture," which appears on the Friesian School website. It begins... "The essence and development of culture has been a major concern of modern thinkers, for culture is the spiritual dimension of any civilization. Historical epochs such as the Renaissance and the Enlightenment are remembered in cultural terms. In our century, two world wars, many civil conflicts and major upheavals or 'revolutions' left visible scars on the soul of modern man, and these tragic events have raised several concerns about the growing discrepancy between human actions and values. Trying to cope with such disparity can be a powerful impetus to reflect on the underlying historical and cultural issues." How NATO got into war in Kosovo (with tongue in cheek, of course) One fateful day, Madeleine Albright walked into the NATO meeting, and seeing that she was the only female in the room, said: "So gentlemen, shall we make love or war?" The vote was unanimous. Courtesy of a post in The Great Books Cafe. Another Unintended Consequence of the War on Drugs From: WorldNetDaily (Sept. 16, 1999) People who lived in police states used to fear the "knock on the door." In the American police state today, the cops sometimes don't bother to knock -- they just shoot the locks off the door. Such was the case in Compton, Calif., last month. At 11 p.m. Aug. 9, a Special Weapons and Tactics Team, supposedly serving a search warrant in a broad-ranging narcotics investigation, performed a "high-risk entry" on a private home. There was no knock. The cops blew off the locks on the front and back doors simultaneously. When they went in, their guns were still blazing. A retired grandfather was shot twice in the back and killed. His widow was hustled out of the house in nothing but panties, a towel and plastic handcuffs. She and six other "suspects" were taken into custody and interrogated. But no charges were filed. Investigators seized $10,000 in cash, a .22-caliber rifle and three handguns, but the drugs the cops were looking for were nowhere to be found. The family said the money was the life savings of Mario Paz, the 65-year-old killed in the storming of the house. He had taken the money out of a Mexican bank in anticipation of Y2K problems. Police claim they thought Paz was reaching for a gun. His widow, Maria Luisa, says that notion is crazy. But here's the most interesting twist on one more "dynamic entry" gone awry. The 20 cops who broke into the Paz home last month were not L.A.P.D. officers. They were not L.A. County sheriff's deputies. They were members of the El Monte police force -- operating way outside their jurisdiction. Why? Because the "war on drugs" allows them to do so. "We go all over," explains El Monte Police Sgt. Steve Krigbaum, the head of the narcotics policing division. "If we can show it directly impacts narco activity here, we'll go after it." And go after it they did. An investigation of the raid shows that after the police shot the locks off the doors, they fired a "diversionary device" into a back bedroom window and threw a flash grenade on the ground behind the house. The lawyer for the Pazes says the cops fired indiscriminately into doors while the family slept. "It was like war," said Luz Escamilla, who lives next door. You know, it is like war -- this situation in which we find ourselves in America today. There's an us-against-them attitude from police agencies that I have never seen before. Worse yet, there's no such thing as a local cop any more. It seems that local police have all been deputized as FBI agents in training, nationalized and militarized beyond necessity, beyond reason and beyond hope. I'm worried about our country. Six years later, the truth about a nationally televised and highly publicized siege and massacre in Waco, Texas, is just beginning to filter out. How do the Paz families of the world expect to get justice and be treated fairly when there is no accountability at the highest levels of government and law enforcement for tragedies of the magnitude of Waco? Think of how our civil liberties are being eroded: Possession of firearms, a constitutionally guaranteed right, is enough to make you a suspect and, perhaps, justify your untimely death at the hands of the police state; possession of cash, once considered a basic necessity, is treated with suspicion and your loot is subject to confiscation; and God forbid you should be a dissenter, a critic, someone who makes waves. The fact of the matter is no one is safe from the lawless American police state today. You can be sleeping soundly in your bed one night. It's not the knock on the door you have to fear. It's the sound of your locks being shot off -- along with your constitutional rights. Dr. Dolhenty has raised serious questions about the death penalty in his article Capital Punishment and Human Rights. Dr. Adler has also voiced opposition to the death penalty on philosophical grounds in his essay On Inalienable Rights (and comments on capital punishment). Now comes some "practical" considerations, which everyone should take note of: Why Innocent People Are Sentenced to Death (off-site). We also have a discussion of this issue in Ask the Academy - Page 6. A Modern Fable: Noah's Ark -- Today The Lord spoke to Noah and said, "Noah, in six months I am going to make it rain until the whole world is covered with water and all the evil things are destroyed. But I want to save a few good people and two of every living thing on the planet. So I am ordering you to build an Ark." And, in a flash of lightning, the Lord delivered the specifications for the Ark. "OK," Noah said, trembling with fear and fumbling with the blueprints. "I'm your man." "Six months and it starts to rain," warned the Lord. "You better have my Ark completed -- or learn to swim for a long, long time!" Six months passed, the sky began to cloud up, and the rain began to fall in torrents. The Lord looked down and saw Noah sitting in his yard, weeping. There was no Ark. "Noah!" shouted the Lord, "where is My Ark?" A lightning bolt crashed into the ground right beside Noah. "Lord, please forgive me!" begged Noah. "I did my best, but there were some big problems. First, I had to get a building permit for the Ark's construction, but your plans didn't meet their code. So, I had to hire an engineer to redo the plans, only to get into a long argument with him about whether to include a fire-sprinkler system. "My neighbors objected, claiming that I was violating zoning ordinances by building the Ark in my front yard, so I spent months trying to get a variance from the city planning board. "After all that, I had a big problem getting enough wood for the Ark, because there was a ban on cutting trees, to save the spotted owl. I tried to convince the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that I needed the wood to "save" the owls, but they wouldn't listen. And they wouldn't let me catch any owls, either - so no owls on the Ark. "Then the carpenters' union started picketing my home because I wasn'tusing union carpenters. I had to halt construction and begin negotiating with the National Labor Relations Board. "Next, I started gathering up the animals -- but got sued by an animal rights group that objected to me taking along only two of each kind. Just when that suit got dismissed, the EPA notified me that I couldn't complete the Ark without filing an environmental impact statement on your proposed flood. They didn't take kindly to the idea that they had no jurisdiction over the conduct of a Supreme Being. "Then the Corps of Engineers wanted a map of the proposed flood plan. I sent them a globe - and they went ballistic! "The IRS has seized all my assets, claiming that I am trying to leave the country, and I just got a notice from the state that I owe some kind of use tax. "Lord, I'm sorry, but I don't think there's any way I can finish the Ark in less than five years - if ever!" With that, the sky cleared, the sun began to shine, and a rainbow arched across the sky. Noah looked up and smiled. "You mean you are not going to destroy the world?" he asked hopefully. "Wrong!" thundered the Lord. "But I'm going to do it with something far worse than a mere flood. Something far more destructive. Something that man himself created." "What's that?" Noah asked. "Government!" said the Lord. From: The Liberator Online, published by Advocates for Self-Government DEATH in a Breadbox! or, Beware -- Bread on the Rise! (This interesting piece of writing came to us courtesy of The Liberator Online. Check out the website at www.self-gov.org/) A recent Cincinnati Enquirer headline read, "Smell of baked bread may be health hazard." The article went on to describe the dangers of the smell of baking bread. The main danger, apparently, is that the organic components of this aroma may break down ozone (I'm not making this stuff up). I was horrified. When are we going to do something about bread-induced global warming? Sure, we attack tobacco companies, but when is the government going to go after Big Bread? Well, I've done a little research, and what I've discovered should make anyone think twice.... 1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users. 2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests. 3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations. 4. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread. 5. Bread is made from a substance called "dough." It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average American eats more bread than that in one month! 6. Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, and osteoporosis. 7. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days. 8. Bread is often a "gateway" food item, leading the user to "harder" items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter, and even cold cuts. 9. Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it logically follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person. 10. Newborn babies can choke on bread. 11. Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute. 12. Most American bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling. In light of these frightening statistics, we propose the following bread restrictions: 1. No sale of bread to minors. 2. No advertising of bread within 1000 feet of a school. 3. A 300 percent federal tax on all bread to pay for all the societal ills we might associate with bread. 4. No animal or human images, nor any primary colors (which may appeal to children) may be used to promote bread usage. 5. A nationwide "Just Say No To Toast" campaign, complete with celebrity TV spots and bumper stickers. 6. A $4.2 zillion fine on the three biggest bread manufacturers. The study of Western Civilization and the major works of the great thinkers of Western Culture is rapidly disappearing from college and university campuses. This assault on Western Culture has been going on for thirty years and the battle may well be over. Good old "Western Civ," the course that brought students face-to-face with their cultural heritage is now replaced by "General Civ," a course that touts the latest versions of leftist propaganda. Consider the current required texts of Columbia's Contemporary Civilization course, the nation's oldest, relative undeconstructed, liberal-arts curriculum. According to David Horowitz, author of The Politics of Bad Faith, "Columbia's new canon is an attempt to establish an orthodoxy out of the very intellectual tradition that history has refuted. Only two Nineteenth-Century thinker are represented in the course who are not socialists -- Max Weber and Charles Darwin. For the arbiters of the new canon, it is as if the intellectual tradition of free-market liberalism had ended in the Eighteenth-Century with Madison, Smith and Locke. When the Columbia course enters the Twentieth-Century, no dissent at all is tolerated. The required texts are exclusively by left-wing intellectuals..." Other major universities have also thrown out Western Civilization courses. According to Horowitz, the purpose for this was "to politicize the curriculum and infuse it with left-wing agendas." Stanford is a case in point. At Stanford, continues Horowitz, the demonstrators were led by the Reverend Jesse Jackson in a protest against the course in Western Civiliztion required of all undergraduates and modeled on Columbia's core curriculum. Jackson led the demonstrators in a summary chant: 'Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go!'." And go it did. And the replacement is virtually nothing more than popaganda for the left-wing agenda. As Horowitz notes, "...this is no longer an introduction to the great enriching themes of western culture, but a course in the way Marxist categories can be used to define social realities and construct revolutionary agendas." And, I'll bet, you thought Marxism was dead! It is not. It is alive and well on most American college and university campuses. Controversy at the University of Chicago Proposals for changes at the prestigious University of Chicago are drawing protests from many alumni of that institution. And, among the changes, is a change in curriculum which would apparently dilute the common core of study of the great books and make changes which would affect its traditional undergraduate philosophy of education. A website has been set up to address these concerns: In Search of the Real University of Chicago. Just to give you a taste of the controversy, the lead essay on the website begins: "We are alumni of the University of Chicago who believe that the University is presently confronted with a critical situation which will change the character of the entire University. The distinctive character of the University resides in the way it approaches research and teaching. Primarily a research institution from its inception, nonetheless it has set the standard for undergraduate education in America ever since the reform of the College by Robert Maynard Hutchins in 1937. From then until this year, the University has done this by aiming at the ideal of cultivating the mind for its own sake, by requiring tenured faculty to teach courses of general interest, by minimizing the use of junior non-tenured faculty and graduate assistants in the classroom, by maintaining small classes, by maintaining the historic balance between undergraduate and graduate education, by using the quarter system instead of semesters, by insisting on careful reading of primary texts, and by having a common core of study of great books which all serious students discuss together as an intellectual community"...more here... Also see the article in the Chicago Tribune: Withhold Contributions Say Angry UofC Alumni About Dr. Thomas Szasz. the Libertarian Psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz is a renowned Libertarian thinker and one of the most prolific debunkers of modern psychobabble. You can visit his website at The Thomas S. Szasz, M.D. Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility. This site is dedicated to the life and work of Dr. Szasz, and you will find information from his friends and colleagues sharing similar points of view to his on diverse topics ranging from psychiatry and law, to drugs and addiction, to psychotherapy and public policy, and more. They share a common philosophy here: Liberty and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. No policy -- public or private -- can increase or decrease one without increasing or decreasing the other. Human behavior has reasons, not causes. Also see Dr. Szasz's books in The Academy Bookstore: Szasz. No More "Official" Marxism-Leninism Philosophy at Moscow State University My, how times change. The department of Marxist-Leninist philosophy at MSU has been "liquidated" and now students can even receive degrees in philosophy of religion. See this NY Times article: Freed From Ideology, Russian Philosophers Explore Limitless Possibilities, by Patricia Cohen. If you want to see all the academic options now offered in the philosophy department at MSU, check out its website (in English) at Faculty of Philosophy at Moscow State University.
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