Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Current Affairs

  • Four Myths About the Tea Parties

    Good analysis from a liberal source.

  • “Muslims Attacked Us on 9/11”

    The above statement by Bill O'Reilly caused some fat liberal ladies to stomp off in protest.  You know the story.  But what's to be offended at?   Consider 1. The people who attacked us on 9/11 were Muslims. True or false? True.  Truth is truth; if you are offended by it the problem is yours alone. …

  • Christine O’Donnell and the First Amendment

    Although O'Donnell  comes across as an airhead, she was actually right: there are no such words as "separation of church and state" in the First Amendment.  The Establishment Clause reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . ."  Chris Coons got it wrong…

  • Germany’s Angela Merkel: Multiculturalism has “Utterly Failed”

    Read it. 

  • Why Liberals Don’t Get the Tea Party

    Good analysis by Peter Berkowitz. Excerpt: Born in response to President Obama's self-declared desire to fundamentally change America, the tea party movement has made its central goals abundantly clear. Activists and the sizeable swath of voters who sympathize with them want to reduce the massively ballooning national debt, cut runaway federal spending, keep taxes in…

  • Krauthammer on Obama’s Policies

    Read it.  Excerpt: For the first time since modern budgeting was introduced with the Budget Act of 1974, the House failed to even write a budget. This in a year of extraordinary deficits, rising uncertainty and jittery financial markets. Gold is going through the roof. Confidence in the dollar and the American economy is falling…

  • The Beat Generation, the Tea Party and the Meaning of ‘Beat’

    Many thanks to that indefatigable argonaut of the cybersphere, Dave Lull, for bringing Lee Siegel's The Beat Generation and the Tea Party to my attention.  An auspicious find in this fine October, Kerouac month hereabouts.  If I wanted to be unkind I would say that the article proves that anything can be compared to anything. …

  • A Letter from a Republican to Hispanics

    Here.

  • Joseph Bottum on the Ground Zero Mosque

    Here.  Excerpt: Of course, the first thing that has to be said about the building of an enormous Muslim center so close to the destroyed towers is that it’s wildly offensive. And the second thing to be said is that it’s wildly constitutional. The offensiveness looks like this: Regardless of how it is intended, it will…

  • The Muslim Cab Driver and the Fundamentalist Christian Pharmacist

    Mark Whitten inquires by e-mail re: Alcohol, Dogs, and Muslim Cab Drivers: What is the difference between a Muslim cab driver who does not wish to transport a person with a dog or [an unopened container of]  alcohol, and a fundamentalist Christian pharmacist who does not want to dispense birth control? Is there not a similar issue…

  • Legality and Propriety: What One Has a Right to Do is Not Always Right to Do

    What do the following have in common:  Flag burning, Koran burning, suspending a crucifix in urine and calling it art, building a mosque near Ground Zero, calling a black person 'nigger,' affixing a 'Fuck Your Honor Student' bumpersticker on your car? They are all offensive, but they are all legal. Flag burning.  If you steal my…

  • Der Fall Sarrazin

    Economist's Views on Muslim Immigrants Sparks Controversy in Germany. The Scandal Behind the Sarrazin Scandal (To link is not to endorse.  This weblog is an online notebook.  I often link to items that interest me and to which I may want to return.)

  • Are Opponents of the Ground Zero Mosque Bigots?

    The mavens of what Bernard Goldberg calls the 'lame-stream' media have been trumpeting the canard that opponents of the Ground Zero mosque are 'bigots.'  No doubt some are.  But not in virtue of their opposition to the GZM.  There is nothing inherently bigoted about opposition to the GZM.  Or so I shall argue.  But first we…

  • The Holy Roman Empire and the Ground Zero Mosque

    Somewhere in Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity he employs the example of the Holy Roman Empire which was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire.  Well, I heard the Ground Zero mosque described this morning by a Muslim on C-Span as neither at Ground Zero nor a mosque.  As for the first claim, take a gander…

  • The Last Refuge of a Liberal

    The last refuge of a liberal are charges of bigotry and intolerance. Charles Krauthammer: . . . promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking. — Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented…