Tag: enlightenment


  • DEMOCRACY QUESTIONED

    Democracy is short-lived without an enlightened electorate, an enlightened electorate cannot be achieved without an effective education for enlightenment, and an effective education for enlightenment has yet to be developed.

    The most dangerous thing to the history of democracies is not taking fools seriously. This is the fruit of their labor and one day it may deprive us of a home.…

  • French anti-Semitism must share the blame for the murders in Toulouse. – Slate Magazine

    French anti-Semitism must share the blame for the murders in Toulouse. – Slate Magazine.

     

    This is an excellent article. But it is not secularism that is at issue, it is simple intolerance and bigotry hiding behind an Enlightenment veil. I saw that same thing among Ba’athist secular anti-religious ‘enlightened’ elites in Damascus. Now we see the hatred they were covering up. Let’s not insult secularism and the Enlightenment, and the beautiful values espoused by Locke, Kant and so many others all the way to Rawls etc,  and instead indict hate and tribal intolerance, a perennial and universal human quality that we all need to struggle with in our souls every day. We can be victorious when we face things for what they are.…

  • ‘Sinner’ singer given 39 lashes by rabbis

    To anyone who knows Jewish life, or Israeli life well, this is laughable in its ‘fringiness’. This is not a serious trend. That having been said, it raises many red flags for me. There is a consistent multi-decade trend for Orthodox Jewry, as well as Israeli Jewish life in general, to descend deeper and deeper into its own peculiar expression, in other words, to spurn universal values and to re-surface peculiar and unique, often extremely reactionary trends and customs.

    This joins a global pattern of indigenous re-discovery of uniqueness in a post-colonial and post-Cold War Age. But not all that is indigenous is good, and in fact much is awful. In fact the entire reason that otherwise patriotic Europeans of all nationalities came up with transnational, or universal values, is because they were disgusted by just how low and racist societies can become if all they ever think about, if …

  • Colorado Republican Dan Maes: Dem’s Support For Bikes Is A U.N. Plot | TPMDC

    You can be horrified by this, you can ask what is happening to this country, and I would agree with you that these folks are frightening. And yet, what use is there in demonizing them? The Tea Party people are classic reactionaries in a world of incredibly rapid change. Cycling is an important element in the revolution going on globally in major cities, and it is a hopeful human adaptation catching on. America is or has become an isolated nation of naysayers who have afforded, out of excess wealth, to be highly independent and particularly maladaptive. They are often dragged along by others. But dragged along they will be. The question is how painless or painful will the transition to new ways of human adaptation. Progressives do no one any good or help anyone adapt by being terrified of reactionaries. In fact, what left and right share in the U.S.

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