Art For What’s Sake? Part One
An untechnical conversation on the meaning of art, set in a Middle American saloon with pop music blasting over the speakers.
Tagged: Thomas Fleming
Restricting Self-Defense, Part II
Every animal seems to “know” the two commandments of nature: Survive and propagate, and each creature seeks to preserve its own identity and to transmit it genetic heritage through time.
Challenge of the Week (Belated): Ghislaine Maxwell, Political Prisoner
We have heard much too much, in the past few years, about Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts. I wonder how people would respond to the argument that these cases are more in the nature of a public ritual or show trials than they are actual legal procedures?
A Modest Proposal to End the Abortion Dilemma
What wonderful things one learns on Facebook. All these years, I thought it took a male and a female to make a baby.
Challenge of the Week: What Was Kyle Thinking?
You’ve just been hired as PR agent for Kyle Rittenhouse. Evil-minded reporters on Left and Right seem to be asking the same question: Rittenhouse went to Kenosha with an AR15 to take a stand for law and order in a riot orchestrated in part by Black Lives Matter, whose leaders have been threatening mayors and police departments across the country. As one BLM spokesman just declared, when asked about the killing of five people at a Waukesha Christmas Parade, “It sounds like the revolution has started.” How do you squareKyle’s support for lawfulness with his support for an organization inciting...
The New Index, Part III: Adam Smith
Adam Smith is one of the heroes of Anglo-American conservatism. Some years ago, movement conservatives used to sport an Adam Smith tie to tell the world of their allegiance.
Utopias Unlimited, III: Slaves of Duty
There is nothing wrong with duty, but, under the sinister influence of Immanuel Kant, the public morality of the 19th century was dangerously deontological, that is, duty-bound.
Jerks 01.B: Peter Pans
In learning how not to be a Jerk, the hardest part is to listen to criticism from friends and colleagues who may be bigger Jerks than we are.
The Autodidact on Aristotle
The one figure who defines modern thought is Aristotle, not of course because modern thinkers have followed him, but because since Galileo and Descartes and Bacon, scientists and philosophers have defined themselves by their opposition to Aristotle
The Autodidact Remembers
Once upon a time I decided to learn Japanese. I had none of the usual practical reasons: no business interests that would take me to Japan nor even an academic project comparing Noh plays with Attic tragedy.
