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That list is 100% spot on.
Now I knew you bought into some of them (had you in mind when I posted the link) but I didn't think you bought into all of them.
I guess I'm not as familiar with it happening on campuses. This is in part because I interpret what might be considered “right wing” views to often times be equated with “truthful” views, and schools should really be teaching truthful views. Being an “activist for the truth” is something which I would hope educators are engaged in, though “activism” now has a partisan connotation to it.
I am not one to defend left-wing academia but I also won't defend right-wing activism. There should be no activism at all. (which is why I'm not really a fan of Victor D. Hansen) I don't want to be educated in "right-wing" ideology, I just want to be educated.
What is "right-wing activism" in the world of academia?
Give me a universal norm of justice and I will give you examples where that norm has been ignored or violated at will. Such norms are a pipe dream and those dreams don't come out of a tobacco pipe.
Do not intentionally kill innocent human life. That is a universal rule that I think governs our humanity.I am not saying this is universally followed, but it is a universal rule that everyone ought to abide by. If you were asking whether there are any rules that are universally followed, then I don't think there are any, since any group can potentially define its own rules if it so chooses. But what is done and what should be done are two separate things. I fully realize that there are those who do not act morally and who break all sorts of moral rules in the name of war, but I don't think that give us the right to stoop to their level.I guess at the end of the day, nations need to decide whether they want to act morally or not. If nations decide to behave according to the lowest common denominator of what is done rather than what should be done, then I fear humanity is lost.
Ok, I will agree that I am arguing for what war should be rather than what it really is, but this is no different from something like the law in general; police on the streets/victims/defendants may have a view of how the law should be, but they are not the ones who decide. They may have valuable input, but they are not necessarily neutral observers. If justice guiding wartime activities is all subjective and the decision of the actor, then morality turns into a will to power, and thus an activity in moral relativism, which I dispute.With that said, I concede that you have a good point about the problematic nature of trying to adhere to "rules" to which the enemy does not, thereby making accomplishing the objective difficult if not impossible. Are stronger measures merited when the enemy does not abide by these rules? Yes, I think so, but I still do not see how the violation of universal norms of justice could be considered justified. I believe it was Socrates who coined one of the most useful guidelines for justice, when it said it was always wrong to commit injustice, but never wrong to suffer it. I can see this issue is a complex one that we are barely able to begin addressing here.
Phid, what I am saying is that each belligerent determines what they think is the appropriate level of force. Right and wrong have nothing to do with it; it is a question of winning or losing. Not seeing or failing to recognize that fact is what has doomed western armies to failure in every insurgency since WWII. And yes, I consider Iraq and Afghanistan both failures in general. In both places we let our moral qualms get in the way of effectively prosecuting the wars. In the process we kept our humanity but the fact remains that if we had been willing to round up and execute the families of insurgents we could have decisively won in both places. The nature of both cultures is that they are family and tribally oriented and a real threat to the continued existence of either would be an extremely effective way to ensure control of the country. It worked for Saddam for almost 35 years, why would it not work for us?The only method of enforcement on the battlefield is terror and terror is what generally keeps armies from going hog wild. The terror that the same thing they are doing are doing could be done to them or theirs. It really is that simple.
My view is that I hope war is not simply about winning or losing, and that rightness and wrongness are quite relevant in this discussion. Yes, I realize that may seem counter-intuitive to the very notion of entering war in the first place - no one enters to lose - but I think it is necessary if we are to rightly call ourselves rational animals. If winning were the only criteria, then we should have no qualms about nuking any nation which poses a threat. It would, after all, be the quickest and most efficient way of neutralizing an enemy's force's and spirit. I should point out that I am speaking about the philosophical principles of waging war, rather than to specific instances post-WWII (or of Dresden). It may very well be the case that facing insurgencies requires a stronger hand than we have used in the past, but I do not see how executing the families of insurgents leads to a just outcome. Executing innocent people in order to stop guilty insurgents would seem to put us in the realm of those same insurgents who violate principles of justice themselves. At what point would we turn into the very monsters that we claim to be fighting against?
That being said, every war is different and so is every situation so the maximum use of force is not always appropriate. The amount of force used must be tailored to each situation with only that amount of force being used that is required to accomplish the mission. Calculating the right amount of force is the most difficult thing to do and in the modern era most Westerners have erred on the side of not using enough force.
So if a side exceeds the appropriate amount of force for a particular situation, should it be held accountable later on? It seems to me that this is the nature of the so-called "war crime"; whether artificially-crafted or not, there is a limit as to the types of actions one side may take within its larger mission. We could take an example of the army that rapes a town's women as part of its intimidation techniques. It has no real direct military purpose and is a gross violation of a human right. After the war is over, should the nation (whether on the winning or losing side) be punished/treated more harshly for this type of action by the rest of the community of nations? It seems to me that this is the basic idea of the "war crime"; society as a whole recognizes the tragedy of war but also recognizes that even in the midst of it, there are limits which may be collectively agreed upon.
I am actually kind of interested in the Gilded Age, though I haven't been able to study it all that much. There is good documentary about Mark Twain (I believe by Ken Burns) that I saw a couple years ago.
Donnie and Scout
Garfield was exceptional. What a difference he might have made. So much for the lefty theory that individuals do not matter regarding the course of History. Assassinations, election outcomes, military stupidity, and untimely deaths do alter the course of History.
Try this.
To me it looks like the basket is being carried by the rabbit. That would also be in keeping with the idea of the Easter Bunny bringing eggs to children. You notice how the rabbit looks like it has scales on it? Or perhaps markings like a cheetah? If I were a kid at the time seeing that drawing, I don't know if I would have wanted the Easter Bunny to come to my house. Looks kind of scary.
My problem with the global warming crowd are not so much the issue of whether the planet is warming or not, but a) whether man is responsible for it and b) whether anything can actually be done to stop it. I suppose I can add to this a sub-issue c) whether we should want to stop it. It just seems to me that this is far-too convenient of an issue for us to take the word of left-leaning politicians. Think of it - threats of a cataclysmic future, putting blame on capitalism, attempts to regulate the masses and grow government, threats of taxes on richer nations to benefit poorer nations, the consolidation of global power for those who use these taxes...does this not scream out communist plot to anyone else, at least on some level? Not that communists necessarily came up with the idea, but that the whole issue is a vehicle for achieving a number of communist/Marxist goals.
I have not seen Oliver Stone's piece, but it sounds consistent with the strain of post-colonial and/or Marxist readings of history. For American leftists, the doctrines espoused by Marx regarding inequalities in wealth were never defeated philosophically (nevermind the means of implementing them). This stands in contrast to views of the racial views of the Nazis, which were defeated philosophically in the West (together with the defeat of the Nazis themselves). Because Marxism was not defeated philosophically by mainstream Western culture, we see negatives by communism ignored. Ever wonder why it's become “cool” for young hipsters to be seen wearing Che Guevara shirts?
I think it can be no other way except in some twisted way. The family is the first and more important source of human relationships. It is there where individuals learn how to behave, how to think, how to relate to one another, how to love. Only after this source of relationship do humans experience other relationships – to co-workers, teachers, officials, colleagues, etc. What, then, is “society”, other than the sum of human families which are bound together within a common culture or nation? So yes, the family is the basis of society.
