Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • Journalism is Dead!

    When Bill O'Reilly said as much years ago I thought he was exaggerating. It is certainly no exaggeration now, if it is lamestream, 'woke'-captured,  Democrat shill outlets such as National Public Radio (NPR) and the Washington Post (WaPo) we are talking about.  Here:

    But we can thank Uri Berliner, a senior business editor at NPR, for revealing the main reason for journalism’s dire situation: Americans these days just don’t trust the news.

    Berliner’s first-person account of the past near-decade at NPR – from Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign through the present – reveals a litany of reasons for this loss of faith. Berliner argues that NPR’s increasingly leftward tilt, lack of transparency, ideological groupthink and prioritization of diversity of identity and physical appearance above other values have led the organization astray.

    If you like NPR programming, as I like some of  it, write them a check!  Just don't demand that they receive taxpayer support.  We are in fiscal crisis, and budgetary cuts must be made.  If such inessentials as NPR, PBS, NEH and NEA cannot be defunded, where will the cuts be made?  

    So one good reason to defund NPR is that we cannot afford it.

    But even if we could afford it, NPR in its present configuration should not receive Federal support.  And this for the simple reason that it is plainly a propaganda arm of the Left.* If you deny the increasingly leftward tilt of NPR, even unto 'wokery,' then you are delusional and not worth talking to.  So I'll charitably assume that you are sane and admit the bias.  The next question I will put to you is whether you think it is morally right that tax dollars be used to push points of view that half if not most of us in this land find objectionable.  I say that it it is not morally right that you take my money by force and then use it for a purpose that is not only inessential and unconnected to the necessary functions of government, but also violates my beliefs.

    So that is my second reason for defunding NPR. 

    Perhaps, if NPR were balanced like C-SPAN, it could be tolerated in times of plenty.  But we are not in times of plenty and it is not balanced.

    Note that a reasonable liberal could accept my two reasons.  I am not arguing that government must not engage in any projects other than those that are strictly essential such as those connected to the protection of life, liberty, and property (the Lockean triad).  I am arguing that present facts dictate that defunding NPR is something that ought to be done.

    As for WAPO, see here for their egregious mis-reporting of the Dexter Reed shooting.  Had Dexter read my Substack entry, What to do if a cop stops you, he might be alive today.

    But he is dead, having foolishly, illegally, and immorally brought about his own death, as is journalism!

    _________________

    *I stand not only for the separation of church and state, but also for the separation of leftism and state.

    Bill Vallicella

    3 responses to “Journalism is Dead!”

  • Oppenheimer and Putin’s Suitcases

    Anthony G. Flood:

    I recently cited evidence that J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Father of the Atomic Bomb, was a security risk if ever there was one, yet he got what Albert Einstein could not: security clearance to work on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, which the legendary physicist (and leftwing activist and Zionist) had urged on President Roosevelt. As Oppenheimer was a pro-Soviet Communist, I thought it ironic that in 1946 Ayn Rand, who fled the Communist system that had impoverished her family, interviewed him for a stillborn movie project. Neither of them (or anyone else to my knowledge) ever noted that irony.

    Oppie’s Red politics was not a youthful, romantic fling from which he was detached only by the imperative of stopping Hitler. Two days ago Diana West, having read my post, wrote to suggest that while Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, the scholarly witnesses that informed my post, established the color of Oppie’s politics, there is evidence that he crossed the line demarcating political activity from disloyalty. I am grateful to her for pointing me toward that evidence, part of which I now pass along to you.

    Read it all.

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Trial of the Century?

    With O. J. back in the news you know what my latest Substack upload is about.

    It's going on 30 years since that circus began with a delightful cast of characters including America's most famous houseguest, Kato Kaelin, Johnny "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit" Cochran, and others I am too lazy to list.  Whatever happened to Marcia Clark?

    Jokes about white Broncos persist to this day.  Where were you that fateful day when a white Bronco ruled a freeway of L.A.?  

    Bill Vallicella

  • Know-Nothings and Librarians

    Idiocracy is upon us.

    Bill Vallicella

    6 responses to “Know-Nothings and Librarians”

  • Reading Now: Karl Barth, Henri Bouillard, Erich Przywara

    'Now' above refers to March 2003. Tempus fugit! This unfinished post has been languishing in storage and now wants to see the light of day. Fiat lux!

    …………………………………….

    I'm on a bit of theological jag at present. The updating of my SEP divine simplicity entry has occasioned my review of recent literature on modal collapse arguments against DDS, some of it by theologians. See the final section for the modal collapse arguments.

    Henri Bouillard's The Knowledge of God (Herder and Herder, 1968) introduced me to Karl Barth.  Bouillard is a philosopher, Barth a theologian.  Both are in quest of the Absolute but in different ways. But completeness demands a tripartite distinction between philosopher, theologian, and mystic.

    Thomas Aquinas, the Great Synthesizer, is all three at different times and in different texts. The natural theology of the praeambula fidei is philosophy, not theology strictly speaking. To argue from the mundus sensibilis to an extra-mundane causa prima is to do natural theology, which is a branch of philosophy.  No use is made by the philosopher qua philosopher of divine revelation. There is no appeal to the supernatural. Recourse is only to (discursive/dianoetic) reason and the deliverances of the senses.  Properly theological topics, on the other hand, among them  Trinity and Incarnation, are knowable only via revelation, which presupposes faith. They are not knowable by philosophical methods. Whether cognitio fidei (knowledge by faith) should be called knowledge is an important but vexing question, especially for those of us who toil in the shadow of the great Descartes. I have something to say about it here in connection with Edith Stein and her first and second 'masters,' the neo-Cartesian Edmund Husserl and Thomas Aquinas, respectively.

    A third source of insight into the Absolute is via mysticism which promises direct access to God as opposed to access via discursive operations from the side of the finite subject and/or access via divine communication from God to man via Scripture. As I understand Barth so far in my study of him, he denies that God reveals himself in the created world or via the teaching authority of any church, let alone the church of Rome. On his account we know God only from God. Revelation is confined to Scripture and to God Incarnate, Jesus Christ. So there is no access to God via natural theology nor through direct mystical insight. 

    Erich Przywara (1889-1972) somewhere in his stupendous Analogia  Entis (orig. publ. in German in 1962, English tr. by Betz and Hart, Eerdmans 2014) adds a fourth category, that of the theological philosopher. But I have forgotten what exactly he means by 'theological philosopher.'

    He who quests for the Absolute may therefore wear one or more of four hats: philosopher, theologian (narrow or proper sense), mystic, or theological philosopher. Might there be other 'hats'? That of the moral reformer? That of the the beauty-seeker?

    Bill Vallicella

    9 responses to “Reading Now: Karl Barth, Henri Bouillard, Erich Przywara”

  • Question for ‘Woke’ Punks

    Did it occur to you that when you mock nuns, you willy-nilly mock a fair number of lesbians?

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Left’s Orwellianism Pictorially Represented

    W

    Bill Vallicella

    3 responses to “The Left’s Orwellianism Pictorially Represented”

  • My First Substack Humor Upload

    Check it out.

    I'm as serious as cancer, but not 24/7/365.

    Bill Vallicella

    7 responses to “My First Substack Humor Upload”

  • Lee’s Lunar Lunacy

    Another example of a dumb-as-dirt Dem.

    No Sheila dear, the Moon is not a planet, but a natural satellite of the Earth, the only one in fact. Its singularity is why, in correct orthography, we write 'the Moon' and not 'the moon.'  Jupiter has a number of moons, whereas the Earth has exactly one. Our moon is therefore properly referred to as 'the Moon.' And as you may have just now noticed, our home planet is properly referred to as 'the Earth,' not 'the earth.'  And our sun, which the distinguished Congresswoman informs us is "a mighty powerful heat," is properly referred to as 'the Sun.' So-called 'journalists' take note. 

    Contrary to what Sheila thinks, the Moon is not made up mostly of gases. Nor is it a "complete-rounded circle" only when it is full.  Does she perhaps think that the phases of the Moon are changes intrinsic to the Moon as opposed to changes in the way it appears to us? Does she think that the Moon is a two-dimensional object? Her talk of a circle suggests as much. May I suggest 'sphere' or even better 'spheroid'? Does she perhaps also think that the Moon is the source of its light? Is she aware that moonlight is reflected sunlight?

    Please realize that when you vote for Democrats you are voting for people who, as a group, are not only morally inferior to Republicans, but also intellectually inferior as well. I am speaking of the contemporary Democrat party. 

    Story here.

    Finally, what was the name of that black male pol who, if memory serves,  opined that islands float and can sink?

    Bill Vallicella

    9 responses to “Lee’s Lunar Lunacy”

  • Political Perceptions

    Only a leftard could come up with this  knee-slappingly risible explanation why 'No Labels' didn't stick:

    The other problem with the No Labels operation is that there already is a moderate, bipartisanship-minded political faction in the United States. It is called the Democratic Party. For better or for worse, that party continues to be the home of nearly all of the remaining “institutionalists” in U.S. politics, and party leadership has repeatedly, over the past decade, passed up opportunities to engage in retaliatory procedural maneuvering in response to GOP constitutional hardball, preferring instead to stand up for a long-vanished consensus politics that has virtually no support on the other side of the aisle.

    President Joe Biden not only leads that institutionalist party, but he is also its most vocal and successful backer of bipartisanship as a governing and political philosophy.

    Bill Vallicella

    3 responses to “Political Perceptions”

  • Herbert Aptheker

    To understand the Left and its depredations, you must study communism. Herbert Aptheker was a major player in the CPUSA. Our friend Tony Flood, once a card-carrying member of the CPUSA, and an assistant to Aptheker, points us to a Wikipedia piece on the man which will provide some background to Aptheker and his work. 

    Tony would have us note that he, or rather his name, leads off the Further References:

    Bill Vallicella

    2 responses to “Herbert Aptheker”

  • Trump’s Dobbs Strategy

    I'd say it's the right one.  You are free to differ.

    Related:

    Abortion and the Wages of Concupiscence Unrestrained

    and

    Slavery, Abortion, and 'Skin in the Game'

     

    Bill Vallicella

    14 responses to “Trump’s Dobbs Strategy”

  • Sabotage Anyone?

    Should a state university add "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" to its curriculum?

    This is an undoubtedly interesting time to be alive. How could anyone be bored?

    Should I rename my Academia category, Academentia?

    Demented POTUS, demented polity. Madness spreads and the fish stinks from the head.

    Update (3:39 pm): More academentia at UCLA medical school. Unbelievable, but you'd better believe it.

    Bill Vallicella

    3 responses to “Sabotage Anyone?”

  • Heliophysics and Common Ground

    The solar eclipse brought us all together for one day. Well, we do share common ground when, like Thales, our heads are craned upwards in wonder. That common ground is the home planet, spaceship Earth, upon which we stand, bitterly disagree, and slaughter one another when not distracted by an unusual celestial phenomenon.  Clearly, common ground of the terrestrial sort is not enough: we also need ideological common ground to make the world less of an abattoir.

    This is something the open-borders types don't want to understand. One of their fundamental errors is to imagine that all-inclusive diversity is compatible with social harmony.   

    It is not that diversity is not a value; it plainly is.  Many types of diversity are good. One thinks of culinary diversity, musical diversity, artistic diversity generally. Biodiversity is good, and so is a diversity of opinions, especially insofar as such diversity makes possible a robustly competitive marketplace of ideas wherein the best rise to the top. A diversity of testable hypotheses is conducive to scientific progress. And so on.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Biden Chases ‘Death to America’ Vote

    David Harsanyi:

    Biden, it should be noted, is a vacuous political zombie who has never met a position he hasn’t dropped for a vote. Today, he is surrounded by Obama-era advisers and Hamas sympathizers . . . who have long wanted the U.S. to be aligned with mullahs of Iran, as a counterbalance to colonialist Western capitalists of Israel. And now that Democrats like Chuck Schumer have sold out the Jews to the vultures for a few votes in Dearborn, nothing holds back progressive Democrats from normalizing the antisemitism that already infects the hard left.  

    That's the truth. Just so you know who you are supporting if you support Biden. You may not like Trump, but if it comes down to Trump versus Biden, you must support the former out of self-interest if for no other reason.

    Bill Vallicella

Latest Comments

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  7. Hi Bill, So you don’t think we should be discussing logical bagatelles in a time like this? I can see…

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