Most people lose track of their ancestors after a couple generations. I haven’t. My family archives go back to when we came down from the trees, about a half a kilometre from the upper Nile. Some Arab supremacists like to… Read More ›
slavery
BACKSTORIES
When looking up the etymology of a word, sometimes you need a backstory. For example, kleenex and hoover were once brand names. Or, how did we get ‘sincere’ from ‘without wax’? These are hardly grounds for complaint. But other disconnects… Read More ›
WHERE AM I GOING WITH THIS?
I suppose I could get someone to brush my teeth, but it’s actually easier if I do it myself. But there are things I can’t do for myself, like get at that damn knot in the middle of my back…. Read More ›
ATROCITY VS HISTORY
When it happened a long time ago it’s called history. When it happened a shorter time ago, or it’s happening today, it’s called an atrocity. Think about what it was like to be an Amalekite. Fast forward to the Viking… Read More ›
AN APOLOGIA
We all notice patterns. But we don’t all notice the same patterns. Here’s one I’m noticing. In defending the revised curriculum for schools subject to the authority of the Florida Department of Education, Ron DeSantis observed that at least some… Read More ›
CRITICAL RACE THEORY
By Critical Race Theory (CRT) is meant a) an analysis of the concept of race such that b) race will turn out to be a, if not the, prime determinant of social stratification. In that sense CRT cannot but be… Read More ›
WHAT IS MORALITY?
1.Ethics and Meta-Ethics: Ethics is about how we should behave. Meta-ethics is about what we’re doing when we’re doing ethics. That is, meta-ethics asks why we should behave as we should. Note that it won’t do to say because we… Read More ›
REDUCTION
No one can accuse me of being fair. But were I to be, then yes, every discipline has its own vocabulary, its own syntax, its own rules of inference … Words, phrases, sentences, they all take their meaning from the… Read More ›
THE REPUBLIC OF GILEAD
In the Morgentaler Decision (1988), the Supreme Court of Canada very wisely did an end-run around the metaphysical status of the foetus and chose instead to decriminalize abortion on the grounds that variability in access violated the constitution’s equal protection… Read More ›
IN PRAISE OF COLONIALISM
There’s a German film called Run Lola Run, which explores the radically different ways things would have gone if some seemingly inconsequential happenstance had been nigh-indiscernibly different. And there’s an American Christmas classic called It’s a Wonderful Life, in which… Read More ›
