The Contradictions of American History by Michael Walzer

 The Contradictions of American History by Michael Walzer

Perhaps most importantly, we should guard against hubris. Acting on our own, in our own time, we will certainly try to avoid the immorality and injustice of the past. We will do the best we can to recognize all the implications of our values. We promise, when we defend equality, that we won’t leave anyone out. But we had better add humility to our righteousness; we are unlikely to avoid the contradictions of political life. 

Excellent way of dealing with the contradictions between Great Men and their sins.

The Odyssey of Roosevelt Montás by M. D. Aeschliman

 The Odyssey of Roosevelt Montás by M. D. Aeschliman

Thus Montás’s case against ferocious Nietzschean irrationalism, its offspring in “postmodernism,” and their numerous, haughty, tenured contemporary successors puts him in good company and shows that he has understood the real grounds of our culture wars and their stakes, from elementary-school curricula and pedagogy to college curricula and the world of academic writing and publishing in the humanities and social sciences. He even has the temerity to defend the Victorian sage who shaped Anglo-American educational attitudes and practices for more than a century: “Matthew Arnold’s famous adage that liberal learning should consist in ‘getting to know the best which has been thought and said in the world’” has become “an object of derision among academic humanists. But Arnold was right about this, and every course offered by any professor represents some instantiation of his dictum, even if the object of the course is to refute the dictum. If we deny the capacity to make generalizable value judgments — albeit contestable and revisable ones — about what things from the past are most worth passing on to young people as they pursue ‘higher education,’ we lose the capacity to organize a liberal education curriculum. As indeed most institutions have.”

This man deserves some serious consideration!

Safety Third: Covid-19 And The American Character by Adam Ellwanger

 Safety Third: Covid-19 And The American Character by Adam Ellwanger

But since those halcyon days of Obama ended, it has become fashionable to pretend that the American polity is so diverse that it’s impossible to make any generalizations about our collective identity. Fortunately, that’s false. We have many shared characteristics as a people. And “safety” has never been a defining concern of any Americans—whoever they are and whatever their heritage.

This is such an important wake-up call to remember who we are as Americans.