Monthly Archives: June 2010

We suppose that having loving parents is very much part of being a complete self; accordingly, many would rather hold on to bad parents than severe ties completely with their parents. When two former friends have gone their separate ways, it is not typical for them to hold out hope that the friendship will blossom again. Indeed, a person might very well be thought to have psychological difficulties if she or he continues to hold out hope for the renewal of the friendship.
It can be equally silly to hold out hope that our parents will become the loving parents that we wanted them to be. Yet, if there is anything that we all that understand it is the longing that a person might have that her or his despicable parents should turn out to be loving parents. Perhaps there will be a miracle! Continue reading →

In his truly remarkable New York Times essay “The Thrill is Gone,” Charles M. Blow offers an extraordinarily insightful account of why the Barack Obama presidency has very much lost its luster.  Mr. Blow’s essay is insightful on several fronts … Continue reading →

Dear Congressman Maffei: I write to thank you so very much for the morally courageous stance that you have taken in support of Israel in the matter of Israel’s handling of the first flotilla that was presumably on a humanitarian … Continue reading →

what I find manifestly obvious is that vis-à-vis the 50-something generation the 20 thru 30-something generation exhibits an excellence in racial equality that is exceedingly rare among those of the 50-something. Here is a simple way of putting the point. With rare exception, I would say that when the 50-something generation compliments a black this would appear to flow much more from a let-me-show-how-liberal-I-am mentality than from a genuine sense of admiration. By contrast, I have seen countless many of my white students forge a bond of trust with black students that presupposes none other than a deep and abiding sense of equality between the two. So to the question, “Is the United States very much veering in the right direction in terms of racial equality?,” my response is a resounding and affirmative: Absolutely. Continue reading →

The United States has become a society in which parents will defend their children in school no matter how despicable the behavior is. The new idea of parental love has morphed into this form of parental expression. And the reason for this is that parents are otherwise too busy to raise their children. So, in effect, what we are seeing is none other than absentee-love. In order to make up for their absence, parents now defend their children no matter what. Needless to say, this makes discipline relatively impossible in the classroom. And therein lies the heart of the problem for most teachers. But school boards do not want to face that. Indeed, in some cases the issue of discipline cannot be faced without having to contend with a host of social issues. For instance, it is a simple fact nowadays that many children are living in an unstable home situation. But countless are the rights that adults seem to have for themselves and precious few are the immutable obligations that parents have towards their children. No one seems to be in the least concerned about how all the endless rights that parents have affect the psychological and moral and physical well-being of children. Continue reading →

Now, no one can possibly mean that free speech works better in a world shorn of accountability. When, as a matter of public record for all to see, a person makes a statement about a specific person (who is not a public figure) or business, there is simply no reason at all why minimal standards of accountability should not apply. This might make for a much better democracy. For, if nothing else, it would contribute to a more precise, and thus better, use of language. We have all heard the expression “Think before you speak”. Well, freedom of speech should not be the occasion when that pearl of wisdom is set aside. And venting on-line, for all of its convenience, should not be entertained as an excuse. Continue reading →

The argument of intellectual racial superiority is a very bizarre argument; for the argument cannot possibly mean the following: For any person of ethnicity Alpha and for any person of ethnicity Beta, it will turn out that any Alpha randomly chosen will be superior to any Beta randomly chosen. Even if we concede for just for the sake of argument that most advances have been made by whites, what simply does not follow is that nearly all whites are intellectually superior. For there is a formal distinction between (i) most advances were made by whites and (ii) most whites made significant advances. Even if (i) is true, it nonetheless turns out that (ii) is unequivocally false. That is, the supposed truth of (i) by no means establishes the truth of (ii). In a word, then, insofar as Professor Walter Kehowski is rejecting the view that “invidious ethnic pride” is very much out of order, the simple truth of the matter is that both mathematics and human reality are very much on his side. What is more, it is to his credit to reject “invidious ethnic pride”, no matter which ethnic group is espousing it. Continue reading →