Cyberspace swallowed up my morning post, and it's too late for me to try to reconstruct the items. Just a few, plus some that Bird Dog forwarded:
This will be fun. The no-nonsense and thus far sole Honorary Maggie's Farmer Vaclav Klaus next head of EU. (The terminally-arrogant NYT makes their feelings about him quite clear.)
Now that we have Dems in power, the AP changes its tune on Iraq. Suddenly, success matters. Intellectual integrity is so pre-pomo.
Boiling Frog Socialism comes to America
A black Republican quoted at Villainous:
I can vouch that being a moderate black Republican isn't easy. My black GOP colleagues and I endure endless ridicule and questioning from other African Americans, including close friends and family members who wonder how we can belong to a political party that is so overwhelmingly white, male, Southern, conservative and seemingly closed to ethnic minorities.
Critical thinking about "critical thinking." A quote from Prof Deneen's essay:
“Critical thinking” is a form of intentional deracination and displacement. Its basic assumption is that students enter college or university with a set of under-explored moral commitments that they have inherited from the broader culture. Most dangerous and of concern are those students who enter college with traditional, particularly religious commitments that represent an obstacle to “critical thinking.” The implicit opposite of “critical thinking” is faith, understood as an unreflective set of commitments to pre- or anti-rational beliefs. An education in critical thinking takes on the appearance of contentless inquiry, but is in fact deeply informed by a considerable set of Enlightenment beliefs, including the effort to inculcate deracinated reason, a conception of the individual as a monadic “self,” antipathy to culture and religion, philosophical skepticism, a deep-seated materialism, and a devotion to a cosmopolitan outlook that permits one to be comfortable everywhere and nowhere in particular. The vast panoply of our “diverse” institutions of higher education are increasingly dedicated to the uniform formation of this particular sort of human being, and in the absence of a good understanding of the implicit content of “critical thinking,” are successful in that endeavor.
Indeed, "critical thinking," "deconstructionism," multiculturalism, and general Pomo Thought need more of their own attitudes applied to themselves. They are flimsy constructions, the plastic hula-hoops of our generation. The name of the game is being cool - and tenure.
