It’s Different

Tom: Capital punishment is stupid. You can’t prove killing is wrong by killing.

Harry: How do propose kidnappers should be punished?

Tom: They should be put in prison.

Harry: Doesn’t putting someone in jail seem a lot like kidnapping to you?

Tom: No. Why?

Harry: I mean, sending someone to jail for kidnapping means you’re forcibly taking someone and locking them up as punishment for forcibly taking someone and locking them up.

Tom: It’s different.

Harry: Totally.

In Defense Of Skipping The Introduction

“Nine times out of ten, knowing “where the author is coming from” is simply leverage for dismissing all the stickiest, most confrontational claims the author makes. “Where the author is coming from” means that none of his claims about truth is objective or transcendent but materially connected with his experience. All of his assertions and claims invariably arise from demographics. The introduction offers information on the author’s race, income, upbringing, religion, thus readers can tie whatever they don’t like in the book to something external to it. Of course Jane Austen says that—she’s white. Of course Eugene Vodolazkin says that—he’s Orthodox. Of course Cormac McCarthy says that—he’s actually quite rich. Well, of course you say ‘Of course’—you’re a Marxist. I guess two can play that game.”

-from my latest for CiRCE

2020 (As It Looks From 2022)

“Revolutions are carried out in order to change the ownership of property and the names of streets. The revolutionary who seeks to change ‘man’s condition’ ends up being shot for being a counter-revolutionary.”

― Nicolás Gómez Dávila

On Faculty Development

“It is entirely possible for a history teacher to enjoy his students, grade them highly on tests he thinks sufficiently challenging, vary his content and delivery a bit from one year to the next, and still be no good at his job. Or for a literature teacher to cover all the books in the curriculum, enjoy lively conversation with the students several times a week, grade them highly on tests he thinks sufficiently challenging, and yet be a failure as a classical educator. It’s pleasant to think that a few in-service lectures every year about leisure and contemplation will transform mediocre teachers, but that is simply not how human beings change. What mediocre teachers need is for someone who knows what they’re doing to observe them for several days, take notes, and then tell them, “You’re doing this all wrong,” explain why, and then they need to spend several days watching someone do it properly.”

-from How To Fix Your Faculty Development Program from the upcoming Gibbs Classical Online Summer Conference (July 8-9)

Person First Language

In the last several years, the zeitgeist has begun insisting on “person first language,” and so it is now fashionable to say “enslaved person” instead of “slave,” “person with a mental health condition” instead of “mad man,” “person with autism” instead of “autistic,” and so forth.

I have no interest in commenting here what I think of this fashion. I would simply like to suggest that Christians begin insisting on the term “fetal persons” or “unborn persons” whenever possible.