Tagged: activism

Two Reflections On Higher Education

The purpose of higher education, as originally founded in the solid ground of the classical philosophic life, was to foster the civilized notions that there is no real safety in numbers; that truth is not amenable to popular opinion; that the adage “knowledge is power” is not reversible; that detached, quiet reflection is the only antidote to the intellectual poison of the public...

Political Youth

The explosive ones. — When one considers how much the energy of young men needs to explode, one is not surprised that they decide for this cause or that without being at all subtle or choosy. What attracts them is the sight of the zeal that surrounds a cause — as it were, the sight of the burning fuse, and not the cause...

Updates on the State of Public Discourse

This morning I noticed two news items that tell a very consistent story, a story that would seem ominous, were we not all resigned by now to the irreversible trajectory of our civilizational decline. Since, on the other hand, we all know (I presume) that we are currently and inevitably cascading into the darkest night — though not necessarily the longest one —...

What Is An Activist?

An activist is one who is so oppressed and tortured by his immoderate feelings that his only means of relief is to disperse his pain among others, demanding that everyone be oppressed and tortured by his (that is, the activist’s) feelings. An activist is one who is utterly without intellectual reserve, philosophic detachment, or the natural sense of irony born of learning to...

On the Passions

“Love is blind,” they say. The same, however, might be said just as surely about anger, envy, indignation, and above all, fear. Any passion, if allowed to become dominant in the soul, causes blindness. For by highlighting an object exclusively so as to make it appear overwhelmingly preeminent within its context — which is in effect to remove the object from its proper...

My Boycott, Part 2

In “My Boycott,” having explained my principles on the topic of boycotts in general, and in particular how and to what extent the boycott is a legitimate form of political expression, I then qualified the discussion somewhat with the following personal condition: I must note, however, that boycotting per se is not, and has never been, my cup of tea, primarily because I do not...