t does not take much to see that Rev. Jeremiah Wright is one angry dude.  And we know that his anger is about all the wrongs that the United States has committed against others—especially black people.  I am not interested in debating whether all that anger on his part is justified.  For the sake of argument—I repeat: for the sake of argument: I am willing to allow that his anger is indeed justified.  What intrigues me, rather, is that he so angry that his anger is in effect self-destructive; and that self-destructiveness is, apparently, rather contagious. 

We can be ever so justified in our anger.  Yet, if anything is true, it is true that we should not let our anger be a source of self-destruction.  Here is a rather uncontroversial example.  Suppose that my dearest friend betrayed me in that I lent him $10,000 and he refused to pay it back although he actually came to have the means to do so.  Indeed, he became a multi-billionaire.  Now, I effectively have two choices.  One is that I can wallow in the betrayal of my dear friend.  The other is that I can get on with my life, pursuing those opportunities that enable me to become quite financially well-off despite the loss of the $10,000 owing to the betrayal of my friend. 

It seems to me patently obvious that I should get on with my life and pursue those opportunities that enable me to become financially secure.  But suppose that instead I wallow in the betrayal of my friend and pass up one opportunity after another.  All that I do day after day is go on and on and on about the loss of my $10,000 owing to the betrayal of my friend. 

Although nothing will change that fact that my friend wronged me by betraying me and that I am out of $10,000 on account of it, there is nonetheless a very straightforward sense in which it is my fault that I am in the horrible position that I am in.  It is my fault that I have not pursued the opportunities that would have made me much better off financially.  The horrible position that I am in is my fault although, of course, nothing whatsoever changes the fact that my friend betrayed me and, in effect, stole $10,000 from me. 

No one can doubt whether American Slavery was a horrible wrong.  The interesting question, though, is whether the plight of blacks in American today can be blamed primarily on slavery.  To here Pastor Jeremiah Wright tell, this question receives a resounding: Yes.

I have asked myself over and over and over again, what would happen if Pastor Wright used his powerful voice to inspire blacks to do things for themselves—to turn away from the crime that is killing blacks in one major city after another?  What would happen if Pastor Wright used his powerful voice to inspire blacks to pursue the highest forms of intellectual excellence?  Again, what would happen if Pastor Wright used his powerful voice to inspire blacks to pursue one path of outstanding moral behavior and then another? 

I have to assume that if he used his powerful voice in this way, then the answer to all three of the above questions would be that the lives of blacks would be dramatically changed for the better, as one black after another pursued forms of excellence that would transform the black community in absolutely marvelous ways. 

And if I am even close to right in this regard, then one has to ask: Is it not morally negligent of Pastor Wright not to inspire blacks in just this way?  Does he not have a moral obligation to inspire blacks in this way?  Surely, this question warrants an affirmative answer. 

The issue is not whether American Slavery was the horrendous moral wrong that we take it to be.  Rather, the issue is whether or not Pastor Wright or, for the matter anyone else capable of occasioning inspiration, has an obligation to inspire blacks to transform their lives for the better rather than to lead blacks to the self-destructive cesspool of bitterness and self-pity. 

Should anyone ever forget American Slavery?  Absolutely not.  But no black needs to bathe in the cesspool of bitterness and self-pity in order not to forget American Slavery. 

It is, in fact, morally irresponsible of Pastor Wright not to inspire blacks, given that he could easily do so with his powerful voice.  He is drunk with bitterness and self-pity.  And if that were not bad enough, he is causing others to become equally inebriated in this way.  Think of all the young minds that he is poisoning.  Rather than being inspired to make a difference for better in the black community, one young person after another listening to Wright’s sermons will be moved to bitterness and rancor. 

If these remarks are right, then there is a very poignant and disconcerting sense in which black American is worse-off on account of the vitriolic and vituperative sermons of Pastor Jeremiah Wright. 

In one of his sermons, he replaces “God Bless America” with a quite different utterance, namely “God damn America”.  Suffice it to say that with sermons like his, it may very well that God will not have to lift a finger against America.  This is because Pastor Jeremiah Wright is damning America—or at least a substantial part of it, namely black America—with his very own sermons.

Of course, Pastor Wright would intone that he is merely stating the truth.  And there is no gaining saying that point.  What is equally true, however, is that one can state the truth for no other reason than to cause harm.  What, in the end, is Pastor Wright’s moral objective?  To hold blacks hostage to a shameful past, or to inspire blacks to pursue a brighter future.  Insofar as Pastor Wright preaches sermons that occasion bitterness on the part of blacks, he is bringing it about that blacks are hostage to a shameful past.  One slave master has replaced another.  His face is black and his name is Jeremiah Wright. 

n the rush to proclaim that women and men are equals in every single respect, radical feminists have gotten a lot wrong.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the realm of sexuality.  There was a song that intoned that women want sex is as much as men do.  I have no qualms with that claim.  What is of importance is not whether women and men want sex to the same extent or not.  After all, any generalization in this regard must be adjusted to the particular woman and man involved.  The real issue is whether or not the ineliminable differences between the bodies of women and men have fundamentally different implications for the sexual experience of women and men.  

Radical feminism has made the mistake of suggesting that when it comes to sexuality the only substantive difference between women and men is that men have a penis whereas women have a vagina.  But this radically under characterizes the difference between men and women.

Even allowing that the sexual experience is vastly richer than vaginal penetration, what has to be acknowledged as well is that there is a vast psychological difference between women and men when it comes to the act of coitus.  During that act, women are penetrated and men are not; and that difference is absolutely profound.  For instance, it involves trust on the part of women that has no parallel whatsoever on the lives of men. 

Between couples deeply committed to one another and united by love, women have to trust men in a way that no man ever has to trust a woman during the act of coitus. 

Imagine, then, the very vulnerable position that hooking-up puts women in.  For the best analogy that I can think of would be that a man submitting to a rectal examination by anyone who walked through the door and claimed to be a physician. 

The very nature of hooking-up is that two people get together and have sex and if, per chance, they happen to learn anything about one another, including one’s another’s name, that is an unintended consequence.  Yet, women are supposed to have sex with a complete stranger with all that this involves in terms of making herself extremely vulnerable during the act of coitus.  And let us be brutally honest, any guy who is out to hook-up with a gal for sex wants there to be coitus at some point during that sexual encounter. 

This might explain why there is such a high correlation between women who drink and engage in hooking-up.  This is because the alcohol serves to numb women to the vulnerability that they take on in having coitus sex with a complete stranger. I regard the vulnerability to be so great as to constitute a form of psychological duress that will not go away, no matter what story of female-male equality that one puts forth.

It is this truth that radical feminists have ignored; and their doing so has caused young women great damage; for it has resulted in young women going against their better instincts.  After all, no self-respecting women can think it a good thing to make herself vulnerable sexually to a perfect stranger.

Changing gears entirely, another difference between women and men is that women become pregnant and men do not.  Of course, abortion is available nowadays.  Just so, there is the poignant fact that abortion is an operation.  It is not on the order of a manicure or a haircut.  This is surely yet another reason for hooking-up to be something that women find repulsive. 

Of course, the possibility of pregnancy underscores in a most dramatic way that women and men have quite different bodies.  On the one hand, from none of this does it follow that women cannot have or should not have an insatiable sexual appetite.  On the other hand, given the fundamental ways in which the bodies of women and men differ, why would anyone think it appropriate for women and men to be equally open to uncommitted sex?  Of course, men like the idea.  But that should come as no surprise.  For them, never has equality felt so good.  And I meant to use just those words. 

If before the era of hooking-up, it was a man’s world, radical feminism with its embracing of hooking-up has made things even more of man’s world. 

What I have argued?  I have not claimed that sex is wrong for women or that women should not be desirous of sex.  I hold no such view.  Nor, again, have I denied that women have been inappropriately excluded from positions of authority and power.  It seems to me obvious that they have.  But equality in the work place, which is as it should be, will never change the fact that women and men have fundamentally different bodies. 

Both women and men should take one another seriously.  And this means that genuine differences in the bodily configuration of women and men should be acknowledged.  A vagina is one kind of organ; a penis is an entirely different kind of organ.  Neither can be defined in terms of the absence of the other.  Accordingly, a body with a vagina and a body with a penis do not have an identical perspective on the interaction that takes place between these two organs.  No one thinks for a moment that the tongue and the hands should yield identical sensations of the same object.  And we expect people to have a concern for protecting their tongue that they do not have for protecting their hands.  Interestingly, we have more of an analogy here than not between the vagina and the penis. 

The mistake of radical feminism lies in the presupposition that equality between women and men has meant eradicating all differences in social behavior between women and men.  Ironically, because the bodies of women and men are constituted quite differently, eradicating all differences in social behavior between women and men is possible only at the expense of the well-being of either women or men—or perhaps both. 

There is no doubt in my mind that women are the worse off for the attempt to eliminate all differences in social behavior between women and men.  And one bit of proof of this is that while men are now more demanding of women—expecting them “to put out sexually” from the very start, it is hardly the case that men are more respecting of women.  This constitutes a loss-loss situation for women.  The expression “bitches and hoes” has become a part of the lingo for referring to women.  That ought to have been a hint that what wss countenanced as progress for women was anything but that.  It is, though, the language of hooking-up.  Men go out looking for “some bitches and hoes” to lay.  And that is preicsely what men find. 

very now and then, one hears a story that is so outrageous that one thinks that the story has to be false.  I am going to tell one such story.  To begin with, the story is about a man, namely Mr. Keith Sampson, reading a book; and the title of that book is How the Fighting Irish defeated the Klu Klux Klan by Ted Tucker.  Now, even if the words “Klu Klux Klan” gave one pause, the rest of the title should certainly put one at ease.  I mean defeating the Klu Klux Klan is surely a good thing; and in some cosmic sense, it is even a better thing if it is the Fighting Irish of the University of Notre Dame who is giving the Klu Klux Klan a whipping.  How could anyone with an ounce of commonsense not see this as just wonderful? 

Well, leave it to political correctness and a black person, namely Ms. Nakea Vincent, who fixed upon the words “Klu Klux Klan”.  Oh, did I mention that Sampson is a white man?  No, I did not.  But should it matter?  Absolutely not.  Sampson was not reading a book entitled “How to Burn Niggers on Sunday”.  Rather, he was reading a book whose very title made it clear that the book was about the Klu Klux Klan having been defeated.  How is it even possible for a black person who has an ounce of common sense to be offended by that? 

Worse, how is it possible for that the black person’s complaint to be upheld by the Affirmative Action Office of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis?  It would be one thing obviously if he were reading the book when he should have been doing his job.  But no: Sampson read the book during his break. 

Now, what exactly is the charge?  Well, the charge is that by reading the book with that title in front of black people Sampson was thereby creating a hostile environment for blacks. 

I actually have a somewhat surprising explanation for what might have happened.  I shall offer it momentarily.

But first, let me pause here to say that I think a person is entitled to read whatever he pleases on his own time.  Besides, (a) there is what a person reads and then (b) there is the person’s intent in reading it.  I might read be interested in reading the book How to Burn Niggers on Sunday (NoWhere: In Da Hood Press, 2022) precisely because I might want to learn about the kind of thinking that went into that sort of racist activity.  A white person could read the book for the very same reason.  But if a racist wants to read How to Burn Niggers on Sunday, then so be it.  Likewise if a black wants to read a book entitled How to Drown White Crackers without Getting Wet (NoWhere: UpYours Press, 2029). 

Back to Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, however.  Lillian Charleston is the name of the Affirmative Action Officer who wrote a letter reprimanding Keith Sampson for creating a hostile environment by reading How the Fighting Irish defeated the Klu Klux Klan in front of black employers.  Here are her letters: one; two. 

Now, while I am all for protecting folks from racism, it sometimes turns out in the matter of race that the learning moment is on the other foot, as they say.  That is, it is the black person rather than the white person who needs to do the learning.  And that was imminently so in this case. 

Thus, by supporting Ms. Vincent’s hyperbolic accusations against Mr. Sampson, the truth of the matter is that Ms. Lillian Charleston insulted the intelligence of black people everywhere.  Indeed, she did more harm than good.  How much more decent—politically correct, even—can a white person be around black people than reading about how white people acted to defeat the Klu Klux Klan?  And if the title did not make things evident enough, all that Ms. Vincent had to do was pick up the book and browse through it; and that would have settled any doubts that she could possibly have had about the nature of the book.

This is so obvious that Vincent's not so behaving cries out for an explanation.  And I have one.  My suspicion is that Ms. Vincent could not read very well; accordingly, it was actually not possible for her to ascertain what the contents of the book might be about.  So Ms. Charleston supported Ms. Vincent in order to cover for the fact that Vincent could not do the obvious, namely browse through the back and see what it is about.  If the only words that a person can confidently recognize in a title are “Klu Klux Klan”, then the rest of the words in the title are irrelevant. 

Now, the explanation that Vincent cannot read makes sense of her reaction to the book that Sampson was reading.  If this is right, then Sampson’s real so-called problem is that he made Vincent feel woefully inadequate by reminding her that she could not perform a rather basic task at a relatively elementary level, namely read.  The issue was about race only en passant: Simpson is white and Vincent is black.  From what I can tell, it has not crossed anyone’s mind that Vincent probably cannot read. 

If this explanation is right, then Ms. Lillian Charleston did what I regard as wholly unconscionable.  It is obviously unfortunate that Vincent cannot read.  This misfortunate, however, does not excuse in any way Charleston’s tainting the character of a very, very decent man.  For Charleston could have turned the event into a most extraordinary learning moment for all involved.  Charleston could have brought out the decency of Sampson and she could have inspired Vincent to learn to read (or to read better).  It was a miscarriage of justice to invoke the veneer of racism by claiming that Sampson was creating a hostile climate for blacks by reading the book in their presence.  Given what the book was about, he could no more have been doing that by reading the book, then a priest could be hinting at a lynching by wearing a cross around his neck. 

I do not know Ms. Vincent.  So I do not know that she cannot read.  But if she can, then she is an utter ass and a morally despicable person.  My assumption that she cannot read makes more sense of her reaction then the presumption that she can do so.  My assumptions even allows a little pitty for her.  Otherwise, she is a detestable human being.

The behavior of Ms. Lillian Charleston, though, is another matter entirely—if, that is, what Charleston did is hide behind the veneer of racism in order to cover up the fact that Vincent cannot read.  Although it is embarrassing not to be able to read, there is so much moral goodness that Charleston could have wrought from the moment.  Sampson, for instance, could have been instrumental in helping Vincent and others to learn to read.  And everyone would have come out ahead.  But that would have taken both foresight and moral courage.  And this tells us what we have always known or, in any case, should know, namely that fighting wrongdoing and its effects requires depth of insight and courage.  Indeed, we must sometimes be willing to make victims feel uncomfortable in order to make them better off.  Moral progress is like that.  Charleston was too busy being black to do for the black janitors—Ms. Vincent, in particular—what they most needed.  Everyone suffered.  Mr. Sampson was no doubt deeply hurt; and we still have a black woman who cannot read. 

Ms. Lillian Charleston: The next time black people need someone to stand up for them.  Be sure to step down. 

s Raymond Kurzweil brilliant?  Absolutely.  Is he right that in the very near future—say, the next 21 years—that the computer will be able to simulate human emotions so well that they will be the equal of human beings?  I think not.  In fact, I think that the evidence against Kurzweil is rather compelling in this regard.  Indeed, he just glosses over just how remarkably rich the human being is in terms of the sentiments and just how relevant emotions are to being a human being and to interpreting human behavior.  The best evidence of this comes from a rather unsuspecting source, namely translations.  In general language presents problems for Kurzweil that he has not considered.  However, I shall start with translation itself.

Sentences like “Turn right”, “Go three blocks south” and the like are easily translated, as are sentences like “The second plane arrived earlier than the first one” and “Mary is a very gifted physicist”.  These are all literal sentences and have no metaphorical meaning.  This is so even for a sentence like “Mary is a very gifted physicist,” which can be understood as rather subjective claim. 

But consider, for example, a great speech such as Martin Luther King’s famous speech “I Have a Dream”.  No computer could flawlessly translate that speech from English to, for example, French.  A computer could translate the factual aspects, but not the more rhetorically eloquent parts of the speech. 

This is because translation at its best is tied to having a profound sense of how words are used in both the original language and the language in which the text is to be translated.  And computers do not even come close to having that kind of sense of how words are used merely in virtue of having all the words of the language.

Now, to have a sense of how words are used is, of course, to have a sense of the feelings that words evoke when uttered: (1) the feelings evoked by the utterer and (2) the feelings evoked by the target of the utterance and (3) the feelings evoked by mere hearers (not targets of the utterance who heard the utterance).  A man who calls a male “faggot” in front of others may have one feeling in making the utterance; he intends, though, that the target of the utterance have a different feeling; and in many cases, he will intend that the mere hearers of the negative sobriquet have yet another set of feelings. 

Some words are intended to insult; others are intended to invoke shame; and so on.  I once said to a good friend and colleague in his 70s “Man you are the shit”.  He understood ever single word, but had not a clue what the sentence meant.  Because I made that utterance with a smile and we had already known one another for at least a dozen years, he assumed that I was not being nasty.  I told him that I was giving him a compliment.  I think he believed me.  My colleague's problem, of course, is that for him it was very nearly a conceptual truth that the word "shit" only had negative connotations. 

Knowing what words work with whom and what impact that they will have upon whom is part of being a competent speaker of a language.  No 20-year old expects her or  80-old grandmother to understand the expression “Grand Ma, you are the shit,” unless Grand Ma’s use of language reveals her to be astonishingly avant-garde. 

And what about the word “nigger”?  Will a computer be able to get away with saying this word to a black person?  Will a computer grasp why some can utter this word (namely, blacks) and others cannot (namely, non-blacks)? 

In effect, what I am arguing is that computers will have the emotional capacity of a human being when and only when it is the case that computers are capable of the fluency of language that is characteristic of being a competent speaker of a natural language, be it Chinese or Arabic or French or English.  And so on. 

To date, computers do not come even close to exhibiting the competency of a natural language that even the most uneducated scoundrel has.  A scoundrel can express a wealth of emotions via language from utter hostility to fear to rhapsodic pleasure to disappointment to sheer hurt.  And the way in which the scoundrel speaks would be the tell-tale sign.  An incredibly sad person never ever sounds like his cup runneth over with joy; nor, for that matter, the other way around.  "I am so tired" said after a night of wild sex is not the same "I am so tired" said after having studied all night.

The computational capacity of computers is absolutely extraordinary.  Thanks to that capacity gigantic airplanes can land flawlessly with little to no visibility.  However, it is simply a mistake to suppose that the emotional capacity of human beings reduces to sheer computations.  And one reason for this is that we can sometimes predict how a person is going to behave and yet be extremely moved when it happens.  For example, you may very well realize that Mom will shed tears of joy when you give her the mink coat that she has always wanted but has never been able to afford.  Yet, when she sheds those tears of joy, you are likewise moved to tears.  The problem is not that you failed to predict her behavior.  Rather, it is that correctly predicting her behavior is no substitute for experiencing that very behavior.  Punishing a child can have a like reaction in the opposite direction, as when a parent has to struggle to stick to a punishment because, as predicted, the child cries.  So, emotions can have enormous significance in ways that have nothing to do with making the right calculations. 

And all of this is particularly interesting because language is not static.  Nowadays, men feel comfortable saying “I love you”, something that was not at al an opton a mere 5 years ago.  This "I love you" is none other than an expression of admiration; and it is not quite the same as when I say “I love you” at the end of a lecture to the 389 students in my Ethics and Value Theory course this semester, which (yet again) is not at all akin to the utterance “I love you” said between two lovers holding hands and looking one another in the eyes. 

The truth is that (a) having a vocabulary is one thing and (b) knowing how to use it is quite another.  And the move from (a) to (b) is as extraordinary and profound and sublime as things get. 

There is no evidence at all that the move from (a) to (b) is simply a matter of sophisticated computations.  After all, it is impossible to give a computational account of every time a person utters the expression “I love you”.  I do not, for example, say this after every lecture; nor do I say it after every lecture that I deem to be moving.  In fact, I have been moved to tears in a lecture and yet did not end the lecture with “I love you”. 

Let me conclude this essay by changing direction.  Let us suppose for just a moment that Raymond Kurzweil is right and that within the next 21 years or so, computers will be the emotional equal of human beings.  There is another fundamental question that arises, namely: Is that a good thing for human beings?  And it is rather stunning to me that Kurzweil seems not to have given this question any thought at all.  For he seems to suppose that once computers become the emotional equivalent of human beings, then they will be a formidable ally of human beings.  However, this view of computers the emotional equivalent of human beings requires one amazing argument; and, to date, no one has produced any such argument to that effect.  I do not see that they can. 

For I assume that computers can be the emotional equivalent of human beings if and only if they have as much freedom as human beings have.  And if such computers have that much freedom, then it cannot possibly follow that such computers will by their very nature be an ally of human beings.  For computers who are the emotional equivalent of human beings will be like human beings from the standpoint of interaction.  And if there is anything we know to be true it is that there is nothing at all about the nature of human beings that entail that human beings, in virtue of being such, like one another.  So why would computers that are the emotional equivalent of human beings like human beings? 

Indeed, why would all computers (the emotional equivalent of human beings) like one another?  Then there is this question: Would we human beings like computers who are our emotional equivalent?  We seem to have enough anxiety over being liked by one human being and then another.  In what respect could we possibly be better off having to contend with being liked by by one computer and then another?  To these and similar questions, there is deafening silence on the part of Kurzweil and company.  And that, alas, is a problem.  For success in this regard may mean nothing less than Pandora's Box for humanity itself.