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{ Category Archives } Politics

The fishbowl effect and the highfalutin’ fool who flirted with it

[I wrote most of this a year and a half ago, I guess, and it was out of date then. But what the hell, everything else I post is untimely. Maybe I can give Peter Millican’s page an infinitesimal bump on google for the next time this particular wingnut delusion rotates back into favor.]
One of […]

Tagged Barack Obama, Protein Wisdom, stupid conservative tricks

Todd Willingham’s witch trial: the ignorant investigation

Cameron Todd Willingham with his daughter Amber, manipulating us from the grave.

I could handle being here for something I did, but to be persecuted like this for nothing I shall never understand. No God who cared about His creation would abandon the innocent.

– 

Cameron Todd Willingham

Willingham was a monster. He was a guy who murdered his […]

Tagged Cameron Todd Willingham, David Grann, Ernest Ray Willis

Clearing the Air about John Williams’ Simple Gift (part 2)

Picking up from part 1, which is mostly an analysis of “Air and Simple Gifts,” the composition John Williams wrote for Obama’s inauguration (it was all a single post until I saw how long it’d turned out)…
The negative reactions that I’ve come across tend to work the premise that we should have gotten a more […]

Tagged Alex Ross, Barack Obama, John Williams, music critics

Clearing the Air about John Williams’ Simple Gift (part 1)

I was looking forward as much as any average Bush-loathing voter to the Change that finally became official week before last, but I wasn’t going to let myself get glued to the TV for the inauguration. And then it snowed, and schools were closed, and what could I do? I heard the first part in […]

Tagged Barack Obama, John Williams, music analysis

Stupid conservative tricks: metaphor madness, schizo Springsteen, specious Sowell

I don’t want to make it a habit, or at least not a major preoccupation, to ridicule stupid people. In fact, I’ve been telling myself that in 2009 I’ll concentrate on smart people. But then I ran across this ridiculous thing written by a guy named Rich Galen. The name didn’t ring any bells, but […]

Tagged Barack Obama, Bruce Springsteen, culture war, Evan Sayet, Rich Galen, Roger Kimball, stupid conservative tricks, Thomas Sowell

KC Johnson vs. the commonplace campus radical–Mr. Obama’s neighborhood

Until a couple of weeks ago we were supposed to be stocking up on information for “Decision 2008” (a lot of the best stuff seemed to be on “Indecision 2008”, though). According to columnist William Kristol, Sarah Palin was doing her part, “helping the American people understand ‘who the real Barack Obama is’” by raising […]

Tagged Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, bullshit, culture war, David Thompson, intellectual diversity, KC Johnson, Rashid Khalidi, tribalism

I’ve looked at change from both sides now

The first time I voted was 1980, when Reagan knocked Carter out of a second term. I don’t even remember how I got my news back then, but I do remember that everyone was very grim around Reed College, where the unofficial motto was “Communism - Atheism - Free Love” and the hard-core set walked […]

Tagged Barack Obama, liestoppers, stupid conservative tricks

Postmodern conservative triumphalism rulz!

Kevin Mattson says that his new book, Rebels All! A Short History of the Conservative Mind in Postwar America, ends with a look at

…the rise of what I call “postmodern conservatism”—how an almost poststructuralist embrace of diversity and criticism of universal values informs the wars against “objectivity” and the mainstream media, the dominance of evolution […]

Tagged culture war, intellectual diversity, stupid conservative tricks

The joy of not knowing very much

A few posts ago, a reader suggested that I’d “squeezed all the available juice out of DIW” (KC Johnson’s blog Durham-in-Wonderland, that is) and I might find some fresh material on David Thompson’s blog. The first thing I read over there was on an old familiar theme—liberal academics and their uncontrollable urge to indoctrinate. Not […]

Tagged culture war, David Thompson, intellectual diversity, KC Johnson

Run-of-the-mill stupidity

A few months ago I posted about the reactions when a Duke philosophy professor, interviewed in the campus paper, invoked a John Stuart Mill quote about stupidity and conservatives in order to explain the relative lack of conservative academics. More and more surfers have been finding that post with searches like this:

js mill conservatives stupid […]

Tagged Barack Obama, culture war, John McCain, Politics, potbangers, stupid conservative tricks, tribalism