Life entails taking risks. The failure to see that seems to be behind the readiness of so many adults in our society to accept what seem to me to be criminal limitations on our economic and social freedoms in the name of security. If there is anything I do not wish to write about anymore, [...]
In moving to the precise term "facial covering," instead of "mask," it becomes clearer that the effect is to blot out the human face and ultimately blot out God from our sight. On a recent visit to Charleston, South Carolina, I had an experience that led to a disturbing realization. Since then, I have been [...]
The idea that a second lockdown, more severe than the first and on a national basis, would not cause more damage than it prevents is sheer fantasy. COVID poses health risks to a particular portion of the population. Lockdowns pose a risk to everybody—both economically and physically. Many people have talked about the death [...]
Thomas Hobbes’ morbid outlook holds that there are no goods higher than material success and life. People are reduced to the mediocrity of their whims and desires. The COVID-19 disaster represents the triumph of the Leviathan nightmare. People used to face challenges and risks to obtain higher goals in life. They understood that there [...]
In the Western world today many people, especially among the elites, are quite willing to forfeit community life, while others are actively working to destroy it. We are witnessing—perhaps even unthinkingly participating in—the suicide of our culture. When I read the news headline, it suddenly all seemed clear. The story reported that new positive [...]
As the coronavirus lockdowns stretch into months, the apparent success of the remote-work experiment is fraying at the edges. Lack of personal contact has worsened the situation of an already polarized and fragmented society, and the idea that everything can be made virtual has been proven a myth. As the lockdowns swept the nation, [...]
If lockdowns worked, we would expect Sweden, which did not impose one, to top the mortality table, and for the pandemic curve to have risen exponentially, as predicted by the notorious Imperial College model. This predicted that without a lockdown Sweden would have 44,000 dead by now. But Sweden’s actual figure is not nearly [...]
After the Nazis invaded and occupied France during the Second World War, the Free French, or the French government-in-exile, invited Simone Weil—a political philosopher, Platonist, and mystic—to write a report detailing how to rebuild France once the Nazis took their leave.[1] This, of course, presupposed that the Nazis would eventually depart French soil. In [...]
The major pro of the shift to online classes during the coronavirus pandemic was our being together, even though we were isolated at our homes away from campus. But the proposal being entertained by some in higher ed to begin the fall semester online has one very glaring con: Starting classes online cold from [...]
The fear of the coronavirus allows our governing bodies to keep us in isolation and the consequences of our permitting this act are more pernicious than we can imagine. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground” has never appeared less fictional. And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the [...]
To justify the Classics and Humanities, some have tried to argue that they remain a practical option for students, couching their praise in terms readily amenable to the outcome-focused mentalities of today’s high-achieving students. But does reducing the Classics and Humanities to a series of “practical” stepping-stones do the subjects any justice? Colleges and [...]
Far from calling for microscopic views of reality and fishbowls, tragedies call for us to shatter the fishbowls and throw out the microscopes, to stop obsessing about our vulnerabilities and on how to overcome them, to stop thinking of ourselves as helpless victims of wicked forces. It is a grey day today. The sun [...]
A recent commentary suggests that American exceptionalism has been shattered by the COVID-19 crisis. If we are indeed left “shattered” and “battered” by a mere virus and our response to it, the rest of the world may one day wish that an exceptional America was still on hand to deal with forces seeking to [...]
Many of us who work in higher education are aware that we are working on boats that are not only “academically adrift,” but which have been leaking furiously for years. Given the demographics and the broader economic devastation wrought by our foolish response to the Coronavirus, it is unlikely that even a bailout will [...]