Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Leftism and Political Correctness

  • The ACLU and Mardi Gras

    Fat Tuesday, coming as it does the day before Ash Wednesday, derives its very meaning from the beginning of Lent. The idea is to get some serious partying under one's belt just before the forty-day ascetic run-up to Easter. So one might think the ACLU would wish to lodge a protest against a celebration so…

  • Dissecting Leftism

    John Jay Ray blogs on year after year and takes no prisoners.  I went on ego surfari at his site and pulled up a quotation and a reference for which I thank Dr. Ray: Good comment from Bill Vallicella: "It is difficult to get lefties to appreciate the moral equivalence of the two totalitarian movements…

  • Politically Correct ‘Classicism’

    There is nothing so insane that a 'progressive' won't support. How about the classics without the classical languages?  Here: Connolly seemed hostile to the study of classical Greek and Latin. She said that the ancient languages could not be taught anymore by Classics departments. She did not say why, besides cost. Instead, she thought that…

  • Conflict Resolution, Troubling Trends, and ‘Liberal’ Bias

    This from a New York Times article: “People are making up stories about ‘the other’ — Muslims, Trump voters, whoever ‘the other’ is,” she said. “‘They don’t have the values that we have. They don’t behave like we do. They are not nice. They are evil.’” She added: “That’s dehumanization. And when it spreads, it…

  • Proof that I am a Native American

    A while back a front page story in the  local rag of record, The Arizona Republic, implied  that one is either a native American, a black, or an Anglo. Now with my kind of surname, I am certainly no Anglo. And even though I am a 'person of color,' my color inclining toward a sort of…

  • Ideology at Odds with Open Inquiry

    (Cross-posted at my FB page where comments are allowed.) You will recall how Galileo got in trouble with the Inquisition. But now the Roman Catholic Church is a spent force culturally speaking and, under the 'leadership' of Bergoglio, is busy accommodating itself to the Left, which is now the arbiter of what is 'correct' and…

  • Left-Wing McCarthyism

    Contemporary 'liberals' hunt for 'racists' the way MCarthyites in the 1950s hunted for Communists. Same way, different witches.

  • Rod Dreher on the Purveyors of ‘Progressive’ Poison

    Here: These people. They have to be stopped. They’re ruining life. Who wants to work for a company where you can become an internal pariah for standing by your old friend? Who wants to work in a neurosis-ridden hamster cage where you have to be afraid that the internal mob will turn on you for…

  • Niall Ferguson on Christine Blasey Ford and #MeToo

    Well worth reading. Especially this: The #MeToo movement is revolutionary feminism. Like all revolutionary movements, it favors summary justice. Since April 2017, more than 200 men have been publicly accused of some form of sexual offense, ranging from rape to inappropriate language. A few of these men seem likely to have committed crimes and are…

  • The Left’s Kavanaugh Hate Fest

    The Andrew Klavan Show, Ep. 586. My best Klavan post: Klavan on Experience

  • Academentia and the Need for Fumigation

    Here: Everyone is buzzing today about the revelation of the three academics—James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian—who placed over a dozen complete hoax articles with various premier “cultural studies” or “identity studies” academic journals. All three professors, it should be noted, consider themselves left of center, as does Alan Sokal, the New York University…

  • Paul Gottfried on the Destructive Left

    Here: The pulling down and defacing of statues by the cultural Left has now spread from the states of the onetime Confederacy to the West Coast. There, Democratic politicians in alliance with various leftist activists are removing what we are told are offensive images from public view. This iconoclastic fury has spread from removing statues…

  • ‘Catholic’ Universities More of a Joke than the Roman Church Itself

    Defund the cultural polluters! They understand money if nothing else.  Dreher: Christine Fair is a Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor at Georgetown University, and a troubled person, judging by her Twitter feed. For example: Look at thus chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement.All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take…

  • The Left’s Attack on Merit

    I regularly speak of the destructive Left. There is no exaggeration in that.  Whether they intend it or not, leftists promote policies that are destructive.  They attack merit, for example, bizarrely considering it to be 'racist.'  For example, there is the case of New York Mayor, Bill de Blasio, who has proposed to do away…

  • More on the Hate-Filled Left

    Jacques comments on yesterday's Shelby Steele entry: Shelby Steele is clearly right about the Left's need for hate objects (as a source of power) but I think he is wrong to say this is "a death rattle".  Or at least I'm skeptical.  We've already been through so many phases of this same dynamic, and it…