More child heroes
I love these stories when they have happy endings: “I had him in my arms and still screaming over and over. Then I ran outside. I saw two boys playing across the street, and I yelled, ‘Go ask your parents … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Getting philosophical: life, love, the universe
Sound and sense: “but I am now with you”
[NOTE: In one of yesterday’s posts I reproduced some photos of people when young alongside the very same people considerably older. Then I offered—without any commentary—one of my favorite poems, “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child” by Gerard Manley … Continue reading →
Photos: before and after
Sometimes I don’t like to confront the fact of aging. Sometimes it’s okay with me (not that anyone’s asking). These before and after photos—a person young, the same person older, in the very same pose and similar clothing—are heartbreaking, heartwarming, … Continue reading →
Looking back: the long reach of time
My mother’s very first memory was of being frightened by booming noises—guns? cannon? fireworks?—while being held aloft above a crowd to view a New York harbor filled with ships. She wept and her parents comforted her. The year was 1918, … Continue reading →
Anne Frank: are people good at heart?
[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post.] I’m currently reading Francine Prose’s Anne Frank: the book, the life, the afterlife. It’s about the process by which Anne Frank wrote and then rewrote her diary, with an eye to … Continue reading →
First, do no harm
Commenter “Jim Nicholas” had this to say on yesterday’s thread about Sarah Conly’s book Against Autonomy Are we willing to or do we want to let persons suffer all of the consequences of their dumb mistakes or impulsive choices? Do … Continue reading →
For our own good
[Hat tip: Ace.] The liberal agenda continues apace, in ways that are especially chilling but not at all surprising. I’m referring to Sarah Conly’s new book entitled Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism, which purports to use social science research to … Continue reading →
Allan Bloom on the ubiquity of moral relativism—in 1987
I’ve written before about Allan Bloom’s masterful The Closing of the American Mind, published in 1987, here and here. And I probably will again. It is so richly loaded with thought that almost every sentence might cause the reader to … Continue reading →
Another year, another…Groundhog Day!
[BUMPED UP: and for more on the philosophical and theological underpinnings of the film, please see this and this.] Today is Groundhog Day, and I think it very appropriate—very—to repeat an older post on the subject of the movie of … Continue reading →
The conspiracists tackle Newtown
I suppose there have always been conspiracists who believe everything is a plot, perpetrated either by the government or a shadowy band of powerful schemers bent on manipulating us for their own nefarious purposes (are those two groups redundant?). I’ve … Continue reading →
The assisted suicide slippery slope
Medical euthanasia is legal in Belgium “if those making the decision [to die] can make their wishes clear and are suffering unbearable pain, according to a doctor’s judgement.” It’s no surprise that those categories are starting to slip and blur, … Continue reading →
On The Closing of the American Mind
Several years ago I read the first third of Allan Bloom’s great work The Closing of the American Mind. The other day I picked it up where I had left off, and was struck simultaneously by how relevant it still … Continue reading →