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Index for this page...
All The Following Items Were Posted On September 1, 2007 History: Everything in this mutable world of changing things has a history. Its history consists of its factual development in reality. But there is another sense of the word "history" when it is used as the name for a kind of literature. Thus, a person who writes a biography or an autobiography is producing a kind of literature that is written history. In this sense of the word, "history" signifies a type of literature different from empirical science, philosophy, and mathematics. It is in this second sense of the word "history" that one can speak of historical research, of the methods of history, and of historical data. The philosophy of history addresses itself to history as it occurs in reality. It is not concerned with the branch of literature that is called history. Philosophies of history may take opposite points of view about the reality of history, one being that history is cyclical and repeats itself over and over again, the other being that history is progressive and involves nonrepetitive stages. From Adler's Philosophical Dictionary: 125 Key Terms for the Philosopher's Lexicon. Have you a copy of this book in your personal library? If not, consider getting one. Read Max Weismann's review of this book by Clicking Here.
Heraclitus (c. 540 - 480 B.C.) Ancient Greek philosopher "Heraclitus was one of those thinkers thoroughly dissatisfied with the accepted accountings of things; in fact, he seems to have been disenchanted with everyone's opinion of everything. He lived twenty-five miles north of Miletus and was aware of the Milesians' speculations, and although he asked many of the same questions, he had a very different way of viewing the world and arrived at quite different answers." -- Professor James L. Christian. Read about Heraclitus in The Radical Academy.
Source: Volume 1 of The Wisdom Seekers: Great Philosophers of the Western World, by James L. Christian. If you want an excellent and comprehensive history of philosophy, the two volumes in this set are among the best available. And I'm not just saying that because Professor Christian is a personal friend. I used his introductory textbook in philosophy -- Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of Wondering -- when I was teaching an introduction to philosophy course many years ago. It is an excellent introduction. J.D.
FOR THE RECORD 1. HISTORY: Federal Marijuana Ban Turns 70 August 2 marked the 70th anniversary of federal marijuana prohibition. On that day in 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the deceptively-titled Marijuana Tax Act (actually a prohibition measure) into law. The bill was passed after a Congressional "debate" that reads like a Marx Brothers (Groucho or Karl, your choice) screenplay. That half-baked "debate" was preceded by a federal campaign of outrageous lies, racism, and utter claptrap. So how's that working for us, seventy years later? "It's hard to think of a more spectacularly bad, long-term policy failure than our government's 70-year war on marijuana users," said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) in Washington, D.C. "Since the federal government banned marijuana in 1937, it's gone from being an obscure plant that few Americans had even heard of to the number-one cash crop in the United States." MPP points out:
We could add more. Marijuana prohibition is a giant federal subsidy to criminal gangs. It keeps a proven therapeutic substance out of the hands of untold thousands of desperately sick people who, doctors and researchers agree, could benefit from it. It wastes precious law enforcement and criminal justice resources. All this for an impossible ban of a substance that is safer than alcohol or tobacco. And finally, in a country allegedly based on individual liberty, the idea that people can't grow, smoke, and sell a common plant, is outrageous. "Marijuana prohibition is easily the government's biggest long-term failure since its disastrous experiment with alcohol Prohibition from 1919 to 1933, but the marijuana prohibition disaster just lives on," Kampia said. "It's time to steer a new course and regulate marijuana like we do alcohol." Source: Marijuana Policy Project Courtesy Of: Advocates for Self-Government 2. POLITICS: Americans Head For Canada Some of those Americans who warned they'd desert the U.S. For Canada if George Bush was re-elected in 2004 appear to have kept their word. New statistics show that U.S. Immigration to Canada in 2006 hit a 30-year high. According to the Toronto Star, an analysis of immigration statistics by the Association for Canadian Studies showed the number of Americans who moved to Canada in 2006 was almost double the number who moved north in 2000 when Bush was elected for a first term as U.S. president. The analysis also showed that most of the American migrants are highly educated people who may be moving to Canada for quality of life and social reasons. And while the numbers were not huge -- 10,942 Americans moved to Canada last year -- they were far smaller than the influx predicted when bogus maps of the United States of Canada began hitting the Internet in the waning days of the 2004 campaign. The day after Bush was re-elected president, there were 191,000 hits on Canada's immigration website, six times its average traffic, most of it from the U.S. The increase is symbolic, Jack Jedwab, the executive director of the association that analyzed the statistic told the Star. "Given that most of these immigrants are university-educated or better, you can assume they can find work in the U.S., so the move must be based on other reasons.'' He cited politics, healthcare, social issues, and possibly even the strengthening Canadian dollar as lures drawing Americans northward. Tom Kertes, who moved north last April from Seattle, Wash. did it because he wants to marry his male partner. He said he moved to Toronto with his partner Ron Braun and they plan to marry, something they could not do in Washington state. He added the war in Iraq and the torture of Iraqi prisoners by Americans -- and the failure of the Bush administration to clearly disavow such practice -- as contributing factors behind his migration northward. "Moving countries is not done lightly,'' he told the Star, explaining that he found the tolerance of Toronto welcoming and he thought Canadians were proud of their reputation for tolerance. The Star suggested that the most surprising aspect of the study is the attention it has received here in the U.S. where it was first reported by abcnews.Com. Wrote the Star, "It has become a hit on the blogosphere where many Americans have reacted with venom to those who have left the country and some 80,000 persons voted on whether they would move to Canada within hours of the question being posted on an AOL.Com site. The newspaper quoted one blogger as writing "If every American who didn't like George W. Bush left the country, there would be no one here but illegal immigrants.'' Source: NewsMax Insider Report 3. MEDIA: Abrams on CNN Series: "Shameful Advocacy Masked As Journalism" On Monday's [August 27] MSNBC Live with Dan Abrams, host and MSNBC General Manager Abrams attacked CNN's God's Warriors series for "a defense of Islamic fundamentalism and the worst type of moral relativism," and as "shameful advocacy masked as journalism," quipping that series host Christiane Amanpour "avoided getting bogged down in objectivity." Abrams further took exception with Amanpour for comparing those who support Israel's defense strategy to Muslim terrorists: "Christians and Jews, for example, who support Israel's strategy for self-defense are just as much God's warriors, according to Amanpour, as the Islamic radicals who blow themselves and others up in an effort to destroy the world as we know it." After contending that Amanpour attempted to "understand" violent Muslim fundamentalists without trying to "understand" evangelical Christians and Israelis, Abrams played a clip of Amanpour in which she "blames the warrior Jews" for the anger of radical Muslims. Amanpour: "Muslims, like people everywhere, abhor terrorism. The small minority who resorts to violence is symptomatic of something many of us have failed to understand: the impact of God's Jewish warriors goes far beyond these rocky hills. The Jewish settlements have inflamed much of the Muslim world." Abrams soon brought aboard Muslim author Asma Hasan, Air America host Reverend Wilton Gaddy, and terrorism analyst Steve Emerson for a discussion of the topic, during which Emerson labeled the CNN series as "the most unfair series" and "the most dishonest series on television that I've seen in my 20 years of reporting or covering terrorism." Emerson further criticized Amanpour for not showing examples of violent Muslim extremists in Europe such as the Madrid and London bombings, and for portraying Jews and Christians as "demons." Emerson: "I thought that, in part, the actual dogma of this series actually focused mainly on Jews and Christians as being the demons, and in fact, one could accuse her of actually engaging in anti-Christian and anti-Semitic behavior by the selection of facts she chose to choose." Abrams showed a clip of Amanpour speaking to Christian youth leader Ron Luce of Teen Mania Ministries during which she contended that campus rules prohibiting female students from wearing short skirts and prohibiting male students from using the Internet without supervision reminded her of "totalitarian regimes," and compared the female dress code to what the Taliban did. Amanpour: "But that's what the Taliban said. They kept women in their house because men couldn't be trusted around them." Source: Media Research Center (For more on the six-hour series, see the August 27 CyberAlert item, "CNN's 'God's Warriors' Reflects MSM's Bias Against 'Big 3' Faiths," online at the above website.) VOTE FIRST, DEBATE LATER: "Two weeks after the legislation was signed into law, there is still heated debate over how much power Congress gave to the president." -- New York Times, "Concerns Raised on Wider Spying Under New Law." CASTRO WHO?: "I'm going to be honest with you -- I don't know a lot about Cuba's healthcare system. Is it a government-run system?" -- presidential candidate and former U.S. Senator (D-NC) John Edwards, responding to a question on the campaign trail. Source: ABC News blogs "I never thought I was a libertarian until I picked up Reason magazine and realized I agree with everything they had printed." -- Comedian, actor, and new "Price is Right" host Drew Carey. Source: TIME magazine
Please Note: Items in the "For The Record" section do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of The Radical Academy. Nor is the Academy responsible for any misrepresentation of the facts included. It is your job to be a critical reader. We simply provide this information as a service to our visitors because we think it is interesting and/or relevant.
COUNSELING CORNER: A Valuable Lesson From A Donkey... One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; It just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey. He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement he quieted down. A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up. As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off! SO REMEMBER... Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.
A LITTLE OF THIS & A LITTLE OF THAT A Little Wisdom: "Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them." -- Albert Einstein. A Little Advice: Don't go through life, grow through life. A Little Question: Why is it considered necessary to nail down the lid of a coffin? A Little Put-Down: "And God said: 'Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan.'" -- George Burns. A Little Proverb: Like an ox-cart driver in monsoon , one must sometimes go forward by going back. A Little Reflection: As I learn the innermost secrets of the people around me, they reward me in many ways to keep me quiet. A Little Definition: Gossip - A person who will never tell a lie if the truth will do more damage. A Little Quote: "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend.... if you have one." -- George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill. A Little Observation: "A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who never owned a car." -- Carrie Snow. A Little Quip: And on the eighth day God said, "O.K. Murphy. You take over."
Some interesting & provocative articles on other websites: Religion and the Arts in America, by Camille Paglia: Progressives must start recognizing the spiritual poverty of contemporary secular humanism and reexamine the way that liberalism too often now automatically defines human aspiration and human happiness in reductively economic terms. Altruism - True or False?, by Wilton D. Alston: As I continue this odyssey of libertarian philosophy, I often come up against a premise or belief or point of view that: a) has a long history in mainstream thought; b) carries with it a substantial amount of mystical cultural value; and c) tends to not be unanimously perceived even within libertarian circles. Somewhat surprisingly, a belief in the existence of altruism seems to be such a concept. For the record, and despite any flak I might get for sounding like an objectivist, I posit that altruism does not exist. The sacred and the human, by Roger Scruton: Today's atheist polemics ignore the main insight of the anthropology of religion -- that religion is not primarily about God, but about the human need for the sacred. As René Girard argues, religion is not the cause of violence, but the solution to it. Is this the end of English literature?, by A. N. Wilson: What do the following have in common: Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, T S Eliot, W B Yeats, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Evelyn Waugh, Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis? The answer is, of course, that if they were to come back to life in Gordon Brown's Britain and wanted to go out to their club, or a restaurant or café, they would not be allowed to indulge in a habit which sustained them during the most creative phases of their lives. An Open Letter to Sean Hannity, by William R. Tonso: It really ticks me off royally when you and your allegedly conservative talk-radio colleagues dismiss all critics of the Iraq War as liberals who are interested in nothing more than winning back the presidency and/or who hate America. There may be liberal war critics out there who are primarily concerned about putting Hillary or Obama or Edwards or any Democrat in the White House, or who hate America, but you know full well that there are many Americans with impressive conservative/libertarian credentials who consider the war to be not only a blunder but downright criminal. Vietnam's Real Lessons, by Andrew J. Bacevich: Finding the debacle of the Vietnam War a rationale for sustaining the U.S. military presence in Iraq requires considerable imagination. If nothing else, President Bush's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars earlier this week revealed a hitherto unsuspected capacity for creativity. Yet as an exercise in historical analysis, his remarks proved to be self-serving and selective. KidNation, by Mary Katharine Ham: I must admit my outrage trigger is not as sensitive as some people's. But, you would think, when it comes to child abuse, I'd get upset pretty quickly, right? And yet, when people started yelling "child abuse," "child neglect," and "child labor" over CBS's new series, "Kid Nation," I just couldn't get that angry. Evil deeds should be punished. But what of evil thoughts?, by Mary Warnock: There is here a distinction be drawn between morality and law. It is difficult to avoid (nor should one try to avoid) moral condemnation of the attitude towards women and especially towards children manifested in the creation of pornography. And the more forcibly and more widely this condemnation is expressed, the better society will become. Moreover, the law must reflect this moral repugnance. Man with a Plan - Herbert Spencer's theory of everything, by Steven Shapin: The great event of the New York cultural season of 1882 was the visit of the sixty-two-year-old English philosopher and social commentator Herbert Spencer. Nowhere did Spencer have a larger or more enthusiastic following than in the United States, where such works as "Social Statics" and "The Data of Ethics" were celebrated as powerful justifications for laissez-faire capitalism. Liberty is not what it was - Much has changed since John Stuart Mill's time, and his views on freedom are no longer valid, by Roy Hattersley: The Liberal Democrats - understandably preferring to recall established achievements rather than speculate about dubious future prospects - are holding a contest to decide who, in popular estimation, is the most important Liberal in British history. Meta-Theory on Pope Benedict's Theology and Muslim Philosophy, by Mahgoub El-Tigani: Christian theology and Islamic Jurisprudence are both extremely complex with outstanding divergences in philosophy and epistemology. Still, interesting convergences may be possibly detected, and then further developed with some "consensual" methodologies on the basis of comparative thinking and acceptable deductions. Atheist Tracts - God, they're predictable, by Harvey Mansfield: As if we were back in eighteenth-century France, atheist tracts are abroad in our land, their flamboyant titles defiant. The God Delusion, God Is Not Great, Letter to a Christian Nation, Atheist Manifesto, Atheist Universe: These are not subtle insinuations against God, requiring inferences from readers, but open opposition inviting readers to join in thumbing their noses. Intellectual Adolescence - From Cynicism to Postmodernism, by Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom: Contrarianism has a proud intellectual heritage, but in its postmodern flowering it merely became juvenile, complacently smashing up the entire interlocking crossword puzzle of human knowledge.
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