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Index for this page...(Be aware some links below may have expired.)
All The Following Items Were Posted On April 1, 2006 1. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German physicist and philosopher
Read about Albert Einstein in The Radical Academy. 2. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) Italian humanistic Philosopher
Read about Giordano Bruno in The Radical Academy. 3. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) German existentialist philosopher
Read about Friedrich Nietzsche in The Radical Academy. 4. Henri Bergson (1859-1941) French intuitionist philosopher
Read about Henri Bergson in The Radical Academy. 5. Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) Recent German philosopher
Read about Ernst Cassirer in The Radical Academy. 6. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) French rationalist philosopher
Read about Blaise Pascal in The Radical Academy. 7. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American transcendentalist philosopher
Read about Henry David Thoreau in The Radical Academy. 8. Lucretius [Titus Lucretius Carus] (98-55 B.C.) Ancient epicurean philosopher
Read about Lucretius in The Radical Academy. 9. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) French existentialist philosopher
Read about Jean-Paul Sartre in The Radical Academy. 10. Socrates (c. 470-399 B.C.) Ancient Greek philosopher
Read about Socrates in The Radical Academy.
FOR THE RECORD 1. Government Surveillance Of Dissidents Revealed And so it begins again. Or perhaps it's more correct to say: And so we find out about it (again). According to FBI documents released this week under a Freedom of Information Act, an FBI counterterrorism unit infiltrated and monitored a pacifist group in Pittsburgh that opposes the war in Iraq. The documents revealed that the FBI's Pittsburgh-based Joint Terrorism Task Force conducted secret surveillance of the Thomas Merton Center from 2002 to 2005. The center is a nonviolent, left-wing organization that works for "peace and justice." Activists from the center distributed anti-war leaflets in Pittsburgh and sponsored events to promote tolerance between Muslims and non-Muslims. According to the documents, which were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, an FBI informant infiltrated the group, conducted surveillance of its antiwar demonstrations and leaflet distributions, and noted how many group members "appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent." An ACLU spokesperson, quoted by Knight Ridder (March 15, 2006), said, "These documents show that Americans are not safe from secret government surveillance, even when they are handing out fliers in the town square, an activity clearly protected by the Constitution." The FBI claimed it was only monitoring a particular individual, and ended the probe when it determined "that someone photographed at one demonstration was not the person they were looking for," reported Reuters. The FBI did not explain why it took three years to resolve a case of mistaken identity, or why it suspected that foreign terrorists were infiltrating American pacifist groups. This case could be just the tip of the iceberg: The ACLU is investigating allegations of government spying on more than 100 anti-war organizations in 20 states, according to Z Magazine (March 2006). That's in addition to the warrantless wiretapping conducted by the National Security Agency, which the Bush Administration defended on the grounds that the president has inherent "wartime" powers to conduct such secret surveillance. And that's in addition to the 2003 memorandum the FBI sent to 17,000 local police agencies, encouraging them to monitor anti-war demonstrations and watch for "possible indicators of protest activity" and "report any potentially illegal acts to the nearest FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force." If all of this sparks a sense of deja vu, no wonder -- it sounds eerily similar to what the U.S. government did during the Vietnam War. In the 1960s and 1970s, the FBI launched a program dubbed COINTELPRO, which conducted widespread, illegal surveillance of hundreds of civil rights and anti-Vietnam War groups, noted Z Magazine. FBI agents and other government officials created "watch lists" of alleged "subversives" (including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon). They opened mail, wiretapped phones, and broke into the offices of anti-war groups. They instigated tax audits, planted phony stories in the media, infiltrated peace groups, and sent provocateurs to start fights at demonstrations. Such illegal activity was allegedly curbed by legislation passed by Congress in the mid-1970s, which restricted the government's power to spy on Americans. James Madison once wrote: "Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded... If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." Those are words to remember as we learn that our government is (again) secretly spying on us -- in the name of fighting another war. Sources:
Courtesy of Bill Winter, editor of The Liberator Online, published by Advocates for Self-Government 2. Surprise! Many Physicians Are Religious A large number of American physicians are religious and believe in an afterlife, according to a new study from the University of Chicago. Researchers headed by Dr. Farr Curlin, an assistant professor of internal medicine at U.C., surveyed 1,260 practicing physicians in the U.S about religion and got some surprising results. They found that 76 percent of the doctors believe in God, and 59 percent believe in some sort of afterlife. The study also found that 90 percent of the doctors attend religious services at least occasionally, compared to 81 percent of adults in the general population. Further, 55 percent of the physicians said their religious beliefs influence how they practice medicine. Dr. Curlin said the findings definitely surprised him because he had assumed that patients would be more religious than their doctors. "Our study challenges that conventional wisdom," he says. Curlin's team also found that different medical specialists varied in their practice of and attitudes about religion. Family practice doctors and pediatricians were more likely to carry their beliefs into other aspects of their lives. Radiologists and psychiatrists were the least likely to do so. Christian, Mormon and Buddhist physicians were the most likely to say their religious beliefs influence their practice of medicine, while Jewish and Hindu doctors were least likely. The study appears in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Source: NewsMax.com And the winner is: Congratulations to Congressman Ron Paul for winning the Republican primary in the 14th District in Texas on March 7. Paul won easily with 77.7% of the vote. Congressman Paul is the most libertarian member of the U.S. House, and, in the opinion of many, the most principled Congressman of modern times. Source. Your tax dollars at work: Of the 24,967 mobile homes bought by FEMA to house displaced people in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, 10,777 of them are sitting in a field at the Hope, Arkansas airport. They can't be transported to New Orleans because FEMA regulations prohibit trailers from being located in floodplain zones. The empty trailers cost the federal government $300 million to buy, it's paying $25,000 a month to lease the space at the airport, and now the feds are planning to spend another $6 million to spread gravel on the field so the trailers don't get permanently stuck in the mud if it rains. Source. Thank goodness!: A $36,300 grant from the Department of Homeland Security to the Kentucky Office of Charitable Gaming -- intended to protect bingo halls from terrorists -- has been cited by Citizens Against Government Waste as an example of weirdly misguided spending in the War on Terrorism. Kentucky officials said the money was needed to stop terrorists from raising money by playing bingo or running bingo games. Source. "Chances are . . . that philosophy will learn to coexist with science and (in Mortimer Adler's phrase) reach its delayed maturity, provided it resolutely insists on being a separate discipline dealing publicly and intelligibly in first-order questions." -- Time magazine, January 7, 1966. Those who visit our Homepage know that we have a mini-poll question near the top which changes every time the page is loaded. There are 20 questions at this time. The questions generally reflect some public issue which was being discussed at the time of its addition to the poll. Since you can't view the results for all the questions at one time, I thought maybe some of you would be interested in the results for each question from the time it was first added to the poll to the present.
Since most of our audience falls into the categories of Conservative, Classical Liberal, Libertarian, or independent, it is interesting to note the disparity between some of the statistics (which are, of course, unscientific, and merely reflect the opinions of those who participate in the poll -- over 25,000 responses to date). While most members of the above categories tend to agree on the basic principles and fundamental tenets of realistic philosophy, both general and political, it is clear that when it comes to applying these principles and tenets to practical social policy, there is some disagreement. This is understandable because practical application is always an evolutionary process which unfolds as new social issues appear on the public stage.
A LITTLE OF THIS & A LITTLE OF THAT A Little Wisdom: Before you open your mouth to speak, please make sure it's an improvement upon the silence. A Little Advice: If you want your eggs hatched, sit on them yourself. A Little Question: If you get cheated by the Better Business Bureau, who do you complain to? A Little Put-Down: Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. A Little Proverb: The secret of getting ahead is getting started. A Little Reflection: Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate. A Little Observation: A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead. A Little Quote: "No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people." -- William Howard Taft A Little Definition: Patience -- the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears. A Little Quip: A divorce is like an amputation; you survive, but there's less of you.
Some interesting & provocative articles on other websites: Clean Air Calabasas - A smoke-free, family-friendly atmosphere of moralistic intolerance, by Jacob Sullum: Because it's getting hard to keep track of all the places where you're not allowed to smoke, the city council of Calabasas, California, decided to start over from scratch and make things simple. "Smoking is prohibited everywhere in the city," says a Calabasas ordinance that takes effect on March 17, "except as otherwise provided." 'Unschooling' lets children pursue their own interests, by Vincent J. Schodolski: The Browns are part of an approach to education that is called "unschooling" and allows children to pursue what interests them, rather than trying to make them interested in things that interest others. The concept holds that learning is best done when a child's interests are engaged, and for a family with the talents and the resources to allow this to happen, great success is possible. The Right to Ridicule, by Ronald Dworkin: Ridicule is a distinct kind of expression; its substance cannot be repackaged in a less offensive rhetorical form without expressing something very different from what was intended. That is why cartoons and other forms of ridicule have for centuries, even when illegal, been among the most important weapons of both noble and wicked political movements. Film challenges the Fed, income tax - 'From Freedom to Fascism' latest movie from Libertarian Aaron Russo: A new documentary dealing with the Federal Reserve system, income tax and government power is making its way around the nation this year, telling the story of "America: From Freedom to Fascism." The Census Has Grown Beyond Its Bounds, by Phyllis Schlafly: Our inquisitive federal government has been demanding that selected U.S. residents answer 73 nosy questions. They are threatened with a fine of $5,000 for failure to respond. Only the GOP can save us - It's time for honorable Republicans to save us all from George W. Bush, a man who does not represent the best that is our country, by Garrison Keillor: Spring arrived in New York last week for previews, a sunny day with a chill in the air, but you could smell mud, and with a little imagination you could sort of smell grass. I put on a gray jacket, instead of black, and went to the opera and saw Verdi's "Luisa Miller," a Republican opera in which love is crushed by the perfidiousness of government. Paul Craig Roberts and the Certifiable Right, by Ben Johnson: A former National Review contributing editor and assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury claims President Bush will detonate nuclear devices near an American port as a "pretext for attacking Iran." Male, female, or other - can I check all three?, by Nathanael Blake: Liberals hate sex. No, not that -- the other kind. While they support sexual acts in all possible permutations, the male/female distinction drives them round the bend. For the worst sufferers, the mere sight of those little bathroom door stick figures can induce apoplexy or delusions of sex as a social construct and gender as a continuum. The Framers and the Faithful - How modern evangelicals are ignoring their own history, by Steven Waldman: Contemporary religious conservatives can certainly find quotes from Founding Fathers to support their claims that government should aggressively support religion. They'll have a harder time finding quotes from 18th-century evangelicals. What's nobody's business is everybody's, by Lady Liberty: It seems that some people -- in fact, most people -- will give up all sorts of things if they think they're getting something desirable in return. Lately, the thing we all seem to be giving up the most of is privacy. For leftists, junk science 'R us, by Michael Bates: Blogosphere liberals were chuckling to themselves last week. I don't begrudge them that. It's a refreshing change of pace from talking to themselves. The source of their amusement was a recent article in the Toronto Star titled, "How to spot a baby conservative." We're on the eve of World War III' - Ex-Mossad chief urges West to unite, warns of Muslims imposing ideology: Global civilization is on the verge of "World War III," a massive conflict in which the Islamic world will attempt to impose its ideology on Western nations, according to Meir Amit, a former director of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency. Goodbye Europe, by Lowell Ponte: Europe's botched civilization, perverted by socialism and lost faith, seems to have lost the will, the passion to sustain itself. If it continues to practice today's multiculturalist leftism, Europe's demographic doom will be sealed. Some harbingers:... An Update on President Bush's NSA Program - The Historical Context, Specter's Recent Bill, and Feingold's Censure Motion, by John W. Dean: President George Bush continues to openly and defiantly ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- the 1978 statute prohibiting electronic inspection of Americans' telephone and email communications with people outside the United States without a court-authorized warrant. Vatican changes heart over Crusades - again -- Reopens debate on war for 'noble aim' of regaining Holy Land for Christianity: Despite a 2000 request for "pardon," widely interpreted as an apology to Muslims for the Crusades, by the late Pope John Paul II, the Vatican reopened the debate last week with a conference that characterized the wars fought centuries ago as defensive measures taken with the noble aim of regaining the Holy Land for Christianity, according to the London Times. Congress Told of More ATF Abuses, Reforms Suggested, by Jeff Johnson: An Arizona police supervisor Tuesday said the federal agency charged with regulating the nation's firearms industry "absolutely devastated" his career and his personal life, all because he gave a gun to a friend as a gift. Nicotine dependence, by Jacob Sullum: Colorado Treasurer Mark Hillman calls the deal under which the top cigarette manufacturers pay the states billions of dollars a year "a protection racket." In truth, it's worse than that.
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