In early 2015, I gave a couple of lectures at Carleton College in Minnesota. One was on our visions on human future in space. I talked about three visionaries—Tom Wolfe, Carl Sagan, and the Nolan brothers (Interstellar). The intelligent students were on board with Carl Sagan’s vision of wise and benevolent ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) as a kind [...]
I went with my wife to the early afternoon show of American Sniper in Rome, Georgia. yesterday. We were very lucky to get seats (and, for once, we were early). At the film’s end, everyone departed with the kind of hushed (I mean absolutely silent) reverence that is higher praise than applause. I had heard [...]
Walter Berns and Harry Jaffa, two legendary teachers and scholars, died within hours of each other. What tied them together is that they were both students of Leo Strauss, and all of their writing was fundamentally indebted to “disruptive innovations” that Strauss introduced into our understanding of thought and politics. Jaffa (born in 1918) and [...]
I certainly can join the chorus opposing President Barack Obama’s scheme to make the federal government the dominant partner in making community college free. That much money will be accompanied by a corresponding amount of regulation. Insofar as possible, community colleges should be community colleges, or creatures of states and localities. Not only that, community [...]
So it is characteristic of us professors of political philosophy to neglect what is really going in the “hard” sciences. I remember, for example, being astonished that Allan Bloom, in The Closing of the American Mind, came close to saying that the one real thing in American universities otherwise deformed by relativism was natural science. [...]
So why do you not write about movies anymore, one reader asks? Well, I still see them, but all the ones I have seen lately have been either annoying in their over-the-top vanity (The Gambler and Birdman, for instance) or realistically trivial (Big Eyes). One exception is the Irish movie Calvary. You should see it, [...]
So I just finished reading the most recent contributions to Postmodern Conservative. The quality is high, and the depth and breadth of insight is real. And I wish I could say something to show I am anywhere near their pay grade when it comes to classical or contemporary events. I agree with Peter Spiliakos that [...]
So I know it is seasonal and traditional to tell our readers what to buy their loved and liked ones for Christmas. The problem with coming up with such a list is that I might disappoint you with how minimal or how banal my reading has been this year. Another is that I might tick [...]
Damon Linker, who is taking an existentialist Straussian line, speculates that the discovery of life elsewhere in the cosmos would take out Christian belief. That belief depends on special creation. So decisive evidence that there is nothing special about life on our planet would explode what are already our unreasonable pretensions about personal significance. Mr. [...]
Some of you know that I have talked about “selective nostalgia” before. I have “borrowed” the term from Mark Henrie, although I think I’m more selective in my nostalgia than Mr. Henrie is. Selective nostalgia is, of course, aroused in anyone who takes seriously Tocqueville’s “things pretty much are usually getting better and worse” mode of [...]
We continue to see constant progress in reducing human labor to a mechanical routine, like the script followed by workers in chain restaurants or the swiping motion that’s pretty much the only skill left in staffing the Walmart check-out line. If you think about it, the compliant behavior required by the scripted service worker is, [...]
Here is a little article I wrote on the connection between higher education and civic engagement. It refers to a longer and more solid article written by our friend Joe Knippenberg. I don’t want to create the impression that I know how to teach. As Socrates says, the complete theory of education would include the [...]
So there’s a lot more I could say about the ISI Conference. But because I have to give some wrap-up comments on the future of the tradition of liberty tomorrow, I’m going to limit myself to some stuff I learned (or remembered) about liberty over the week. 1. The singular (classic) Greek contribution to liberty [...]
According to Kimberly Strassel (and this is the general line of the Wall Street Journal), conservatives are those who believe that government should do as little as possible to inhibit to the operation of the free market and as much as possible to maximize the free choice of individuals. Everyone will be better off as a result. Any deviation [...]