Monthly Archives: November 2009

Of all the charges leveled against me at Syracuse University, the charge that I am arrogant is the one that intrigues me the most.  Some students have accused me of being arrogant; and of late, a few of colleagues in … Continue reading →

The horror over the torture and killing of the gay student Matthew Shepard (1998) almost transmogrified into a day of national morning. Surely, the Left does not think that the life of a citizen of the United States has greater moral worth than the life of a citizen of Turkey. And consistency requires holding that if the United States is morally obnoxious in its failure to be fully accepting of gays, then the same moral assessment holds for any other country, be it Islamic or Christian or Jewish. That is, in order for the Left to criticize Islam, it would have to acknowledge that there is indeed an objective morality; and that right and wrong is not just about who can yell the loudest or get the most votes. The Left does not have the courage to do that; and Islamic radicals are counting upon that very reality. Continue reading →

In so many unspoken word, it turns out that President Barrack Obama has called Kenneth Gladney exactly what the SEIU individuals who attacked Gladney called him: a nigger. There is not–and cannot be–a good explanation for why President Obama invited Henry Louis Gates to the White House given what happened to Gates, but not Kenneth Gladney to the White House given what happened to Gladney. Continue reading →

When I think of wrongdoing, I am struck by the fact that what contributes to the thriving of wrongful behavior is the silence of so many. Most people in the Old South never lynched anyone. Alas, what is true is that those who participated in lynching could count upon the silence of those who never lift a finger to lynch anyone. Ms. Cheryl Roberts is my hero because she did not remain silent when she could so very easily have taken that path. She took a stand against the man whom she married and with whom she had two children. If every priest who know about the sexual abuse that was going on in the Catholic Church had taken a stand against those priests who were committing that horror, it is safe to say that hundreds, if not thousands, of young boys would not been sexually abused. Continue reading →

It is ironic that a nation that found the morally commendable will to end slavery should turn out to lack the will to end its own economic demise. With the ascendency of political correctness rational reflection began to diminish; for there is something akin to a direct correlation between the rise of political correctness and the decline of rational reflection. And zero-tolerance is but the sibling of political correctness. In both cases, the relevant particulars of the circumstances are made irrelevant to an utterly eviscerated conception of equality. The seeming indifference that most Americans have to the national debt is an example par excellence of way too many Americans doing just that, namely failing to grasp that the national debt is in effect an ever tightening noose around the neck of the United States. Grasping this truth does not require being an economist, let alone a Nobel Prize winner in economics. All that one needs in order to see the undeniable horror of America’s debt is what used to pass for none other than common sense. Continue reading →

In the absence of some form of authorized research, any military person contacting Al-Qaeda would be a cause for alarm. If that person is Muslim, well: the reason for concern does not change one iota. Far from being a form of bias against Muslims, what we have is none other than a manifest form of commonsense. A disloyal soldier of any ethnic group is not fit to serve in the military. And at this point in time, a military personnel’s contacting Al-Qaeda of her or his own accord is as clear an indication as we could want that the person’s loyalty to American forces is very much suspect. Insofar as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews cannot see this he is clearly a fool. Worse, he is a morally dangerous person. Continue reading →

Ben Stein asks: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him? Whatever else is true, the idea of God reinforced the idea of reverence. And while no world of humans is perfect, an inescapable truth is that a world which takes reverence seriously will automatically be a better world than one which does not take reverence seriously. And if there is no God, the current trajectory would suggest that we are better off with the myth that there is one than with the reality that God does not exist and, therefore, anything goes. Continue reading →

Saudi Arabia is crucifying a child rapist.  International Rights Groups think that Saudi Arabia is goning too far.  I, myself, wonder, from time to time, if it can be said that a person effectively defeats his claim to a right … Continue reading →