Educational Shopping

I came across this article the other day. It has for a long time been my opinion that the academy is way too mushy on issues where it is important for it to be resolute while at the same time it tries to compensate by being utterly unyielding in areas were it is usually quite unimportant to be so.

The problem is not simply shopping for classes, or being forced to include “many points of view” for the sake of political correctness. It seems to me that students are able to “shop” for what they will devote their higher levels of seriousness and concern towards, and most of these choices in this cafeteria are not academic in nature at all and are in fact usually anti-academic. It is not value pluralism that is the culprit, it is the increasing realitiy that faculty memebrs are caught between the whims of administrators and students. What we lack ultimately is the ability to teach contingent judgment and thinking, and to develop students minds to address these critical human faculties.

Defence of the realm of ideas – Books – Times Online

Defence of the realm of ideas – Books – Times Online

Here I am with yet more insightful commentary on books I have not read (and probably will not read either). It is interesting to me, to read the write-up on Mr. Conquest’s new book and wonder about how one can talk so matter of factly as Communism as “failing” because it could not deliver on it’s promise. That, in and of itself is not interesting, but taken with the “challenges” of 19th century classical liberalism, it is interesting to see how they magically don’t fall at the feet of this worldview in terms of it being unable to deliver on its alleged promise. The ideals of individual liberty, tolerance, and etc. are of course noble goals, and are more noble than the alternative. Yet, “enforcing tolerance” has proven to be, to put it as politely as I can, an elusive goal.

What fringe groups offer more than anything else, it seems to me, is a coherent structure of power and authority that liberalism lacks, because it is an ideology. It is not governance, and it should never be confused with governance. It is funny how those on the Mayflower didn’t read Locke or Rawls, yet still formed a contract by which to live as equals.

The common complaint that I will make here is that the problem is one of democracy, not liberal democracy per se, but democracy of various types of institutional desings that are strong enough to hold themselves up as desirable to the people living under them. This, generally, one would imagine, will resemble liberal democracy despite variations. Nevertheless, we suffer the same syndrome of leading with our values instead of with our institutions… and our values can’t dance.

So long and thanks for all the beer

I met Bobby Valentine at the batting cages in Lemoyne, PA back in 1994. He was signing autographs and had come through the area because the cages were run by a scout for the Mets named Carmen Fusco.

Some little boy walked up to him and his Dad said to him, “this man used to manage the Rangers.” My Dad, standing in line, then said, “he’s also the best third base coach the New York Mets have ever had.” It was true. I don’t know it’s true in any factual way. I learned it by wrote, as my dad would say this over and over again any time a third base coach screwed up for the Mets, “Bobby Valentine, now that was a third base coach.”

Valentine looked up and said, “Thanks, I really appreciate that.” Having watched repeated travesties at third base this year in my first year as Nationals fan, I understand the connection a little better. Valentine, the guy who put in his time only getting noticed when he made a bad decision on whether or not to send a runner home, and my Dad, the frustrated fan who seemed to actually genuinely miss Bobby Valentine at third base, a real sense of loss in his voice.

Perhaps, if the Washington Post article is accurate, I was at that time meeting a genuine cultural icon, and I did not even know it. All I can say is that I had a really big smile on my face as I read this article. I can see the headlines, “Cultural Revolution lead by example of man who managed baseball game with funny nose glasses disguise.” The pro teams who want Bobby V in the US, they don’t need him. In LA, he probably won’t change how well the players play. After all the Dodgers players aren’t beaten by management, they just beat each other.

This is a nice story, because rater than get back to the big leagues, it’s a story about a person who has chosen to be happy where he is and realize that he is at home and important. Good luck next season, Bobby V.

Retitled Blog; Same Old Story

In the wake of getting tired of deliciously melding Ace of Bas and Martin Heidegger, I have retitled this little thing now that I am back home and back on the old computer again.

Professor Luban, who I had the chance to meet back in the Fall of 2000, has written an Op-ed whose clarity and importance is, well, just a wonderful thing.

Also interesting, a Post book review talking about how much personal history of individuals effect the pivotal decisions that they make. Sigh. Of course, if human activity doesn’t work the same way as, say, cellular respiration, then the entire point of view both historian and critic take are sort of silly, and are just one more article subject to the ridicule for their absolute uncomprehnsion of the possibility and contingency of human action. Sigh.

So this is how the cookie crumbles?

Now we know why Bob Woodward was so staunchly supporting Judith Miller on the talk show circuit. If it hasn’t been made clear yet, it should be now: journalists have as much to lose from the Plame investigation as the White House. Patrick Fitzgerald’s analogy is a compelling one, they have all done the equivalent of witnessing a murder or robeery and abjectly refused to help. By recieving information that it is against the law to recieve, they are witnesses to a crime, and their duty as journalists does not excuse their responsibility to law abidingness.

"Never Again"?

The famous statement “Never Again” that is inscribed in the UN has been perhaps the most traumatically laughable promise of our age. There have been the true believers, those who believe in this statement and its mission, and hope and work for a world held to its promise. There are those who are cynical, those who look at the Balkans and Rwanda and see the flagrant contradictions to the promise and deem it a lost, hopeless cause… and then there are those who seem bent on destroying the promise.

Today’s Washington Post has a headline story outlining the CIA’s network of secret prisons. A related story appears on Scottish investigations into reports that the United States is exporting prisoners to countries who will torture them. There seems to be mounting evidence that American citizens need to fear that its representatives acting on their behalf are spending their political capital on tyrranous activity – and trying as hard as possible from telling them that they are doing so.

We should be clear, not all secret detentions, state-sponsored murder, and torture are created equal. Our legal tradition recognizes this with the Furman v. Georgia case and its subsequent follow-ups. Nevertheless, Seymour Hersh’s account of the CIA holding and torturing a lot of low-value targets deserves a much more serious look from those who believe him to be politically motivated in his writings. It might very well be that some of the secret detentions are for security reasons and that some of the torture is inspired by officials believing that they are in a “Jack Bauer situation”, but there is much to suggest that this is not the only type of secret detention and prisoner abuse going on, as Abu Gharib and reports from Guantanamo Bay clearly suggest.

What is so galling about this is precisely how undemocratically we are handling such an important issue as our own barbarism. Again, barbarism is perhaps a sometimes necessary thing, and I think that it would be great to hear such arguments about when it is and is not justifiable to conclusion. Michael Walzer, for example, has taken a very famous crack at this question in regards to warfare. The fact of the matter is that whether or not we tend to lean towards or opposing the actions of the Executive and the CIA, we are left here to argue on silly websites like this one after the fact and NOT before. EVEN IF the government came out tomorrow with documents somehow undeniably showing that there is no unjustifiable treatment of prisoners at these facilities, there is something gravely troubling about the fact that the executive branch COULD torture people secretly and indiscriminately and we would not know anything about it until it was all over.

In terms of the facts of what this administration has done, the closeness between “could” and “is” will likely lead us down a very dark road of discovery if most news stories on the subject are any indication. No matter what, the government should not conduct such operations in a cloud of secrecy. The public has the right to decide whether the actions of its state cross the line into unconscionable brutality or not before the state acts, and not after.

I can’t help but think of Camus’ statement that his only political enemies are the executioners, and that for all of the criticism of how simple and unrealistic a stance this seems to be, the fact of the matter is that one can still round up quite a great deal of political enemies using this formula. What democratic citizens should guarantee for themselves, as much as is possible, that their own leaders are not on that list, and that their are grave consequences for those leaders who are. “Never again” is not the rule of law, but it is an “intimate connection” (where “law” comes from in the Latin) that binds our age of genocide, terrorism, and secret police. We are not bound to it by anyone, but that is not the point of promises in the first place. Promises are so that you are the one binding yourself to a pledge in recognition that you have the ability to go a different direction. What direction is a state that walks away from this pledge “never again” actually going instead? One shudders to think it.