I’ve been trying for years now, but to no avail. And so I’ve finally given up hoping for death threats. Instead I’ve decided to settle, if I can get even this, for a petition for my dismissal. To that end… Read More ›
holocaust denial
CALLING OUT CODE-CALLING
I’m not sure it’s anything new, so I’ll just say there’s a particular effective but pernicious ploy in popular argumentation that I’m going to call ‘code-calling’. For example, during the 2016 Presidential campaign Americans were told that accusing so-and-so of… Read More ›
AN OPEN LETTER TO MY AS-YET-UNINITIATED STUDENTS
Some university administrators, and a few of my colleagues, want to offer you a babysitting service, not for your children but for yourselves. And some of you got so used to it in high school that you want to be… Read More ›
WHAT IS HOLOCAUST DENIAL?
“I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.” In case you’re not old enough to remember, it’s an Eric Clapton song from 1974. “Yes we killed millions of Jews during the war, but not only Jews.” “Yes… Read More ›
OF CRIMES BY ASSOCIATION WITH CRIMES
Definitive of the Millian liberalism to which most of us purport to subscribe is the view that a) all is permitted save what is prohibited, and that b) a necessary, albeit insufficient, condition of some behavior being justifiably prohibited is… Read More ›
DON QUIXOTE’S BLESSING
Why is it that some truths have to be learned over and over and over again? I suppose it’s because they’re just too hard to believe. I learned about fifteen years ago that many of the people I work with… Read More ›
THE HAIDT HYPOTHESIS
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has argued, quite convincingly, that a university can dedicate itself to the search for truth, or to the promotion of social justice, but not both. Truth and justice are seldom about the same thing. But when… Read More ›
AN ALIEN PERSPECTIVE
Three score and eight years ago I landed on this planet, but I think it might have been from another one. I say this because I understand so little of why humans think as they do, and they seem to… Read More ›
MONIKA’S MOM AND PIUS XII
Monika Schaefer, a Jasper, Alberta woman, and daughter of post-war German immigrants, is currently in a German prison awaiting trial for Holocaust denial, a criminal offense in that and several other European countries, though not in Canada. The charge was… Read More ›
WHAT’S MY MOTIVATION?
Once you believe, as most of us do, that 9/11 was the work of nineteen perhaps guileless young men, sent on that mission by a few older and wiser men, you need to have a hold on their motivation, either… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 