The meaning of a word or phrase is how it’s used, and its use changes with the alacrity of the weather. Kleenex used to be a brand name, now it’s synonymous with facial tissue. Likewise to vacuum became to hoover…. Read More ›
cancel culture
REQUIEM FOR THE UNIVERSITY
Universities are like any other institution. They evolve, they devolve. Sometimes they rise out of the ashes, and sometimes they go the way of the dodo bird. But they always morph. So though I’ve recently come to co-awfulise with my… Read More ›
PREEMPTIVE INSURGENCY
I’ve made no secret elsewhere – but so far not on this blog – of what I take to be the driver of both our moral dispositions and our political arrangements. It is, as Thomas Hobbes argued, the wherewithal to… Read More ›
THREE WAYS TO DEFANG THE MOB
Now that the Woke have achieved ascendency in the current public discourse – and topped itself off by joining in with the ‘cancel culture’ – the time has come for those of us who’ve yet to convert to their new… Read More ›
OF TREAT AND REGARD
Most of my students are white, middle class, and sexually vanilla. So this hasn’t happened to me yet, but I’m sure it’s just around the corner. Something I say is going to make a student ‘uncomfortable’, because it challenges some… Read More ›
HOW TO BE BOTH PRIVILEGED AND WOKE
For some time now I’ve been standing back and keeping bemused score on the latest salvos in the Great Cancel War, a war that’s been going on since even before we emerged from the cave. Sometimes it’s been about sedition,… Read More ›
‘TWAS AND ‘TIS ALWAYS THUS
There isn’t a single person – or a married one for that matter – who hasn’t done something unworthy of himself. Even that Jesus fellow overturned tables that didn’t belong to him. So if we only erect statues to “he… Read More ›
NOTES ON THE CULTURE WAR
The Cancel Culture War that’s been on high simmer for several years now has heated up considerably since the death of George Floyd on May 25th. That’s probably a good thing, insofar as the conflict is finally revealing what it’s… Read More ›
PUSHBACK
There are no Italian restaurants in Italy. They’re just restaurants. Similarly, until the late Sixties there was no ‘conservative’ radio. There was just radio. The conservative media became ‘conservative’ only when the mainstream turned to the left. As a result,… Read More ›
