Tag Archives: John Locke

Anti-American Leftism in Practice: Norman Podhoretz on Barack Obama’s (Failed) Presidency

Of Barack Obama’s apparent failure as president, Norman Podhoretz, writing in the Wall Street Journal, traces it to President Obama’s anti-Americanism, which he defines as follows: [H]is unshakable strategic objective . . . is to turn this country into a … Continue reading

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China’s Quiet Brain Drain (Contrasted with America’s Mind Wells)

Do you live in a brain drain society (like China) or a mind gathering—or mind well—society (like the United States)? The Atlantic’s James Fallows has been living in China for many years, and recently made this astute observation: Because 95 percent of the world’s population … Continue reading

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An Apt Quote Against Ireland’s New Anti-Free Speech Blasphemy Law

C. Bradlaugh, quoted in Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner’s Penalties Upon Opinion (1934): Laws to punish differences of opinion are as useless as they are monstrous. Differences of opinion on politics are denounced and punished as seditious, on religious topics as blasphemous, … Continue reading

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What is Empiricism?

Here’s a quote from Wikipedia: In philosophy, empiricism is a theory of knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from experience. Empiricism is one of several competing views about how we know “things,” part of the branch of philosophy called epistemology, … Continue reading

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Once You Leave the Realm of the Empirical, How Do You Discriminate Between Non-Empirical Languages?

I think this is a very tricky question. Once you leave the sciences and the languages of empiricism that scientists speak to one another in, or once you come up against questions that empiricism cannot directly address (such as should … Continue reading

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A Blow to Free Speech?

Richard Dawkins’s “There’s probably no God” bus ads got complaints (in Britain) to the Advertising Standards Authority, and it ruled that the ad campaign can continue: The Advertising Standards Authority said it assessed 326 complaints. Some claimed the wording was … Continue reading

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Was 2008 a Bad Year for Free Speech?: Janet Albrechsten Thinks So

Janet Albrechsten’s review of the threats to free speech that occurred in 2008 (primarily triggered pre-emptively by fears of fundamentalist Muslim violence directed at authors and publishers) is sobering reading. Money quote: If large sections of the media – normally … Continue reading

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Things Can Be Different

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A Short Sass of Those Who Call Themselves Religious, and Yet Voted in California to Take Away Gay Peoples’ Marriage Rights

You are entitled to believe anything you wish about the Bible and gay people. But your belief about the Bible, in a free society, cannot be normative for everyone else. If gay people wish to disregard the Bible, and ignore … Continue reading

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From Torquemada to the War on Terror: A Review of AC Grayling’s Latest Book, “Toward the Light of Liberty”

A.C. Grayling is a British philosopher. He is a friend of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and although he is not as well known as these two authors, his latest book, Toward the Light of Liberty (2007) is every bit as … Continue reading

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“That Powerful Instrument of Error and Deceit”: John Locke on the Dark, Spell-Casting Art of Rhetoric—and What It Means for Us Today

Rhetoric, the art of persuasion, is like alcohol. It can be used responsibly, but too frequently it’s not, and so it has a dodgy reputation, and deservedly so. It shows up in too many places that you wouldn’t want to … Continue reading

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