“Perhaps Marcuse’s ability to reconcile liberty and dictatorship has come of age, and Orwell’s characterization of such thinking as ‘doublethink’ does not bring the flash of recognition that it once did” (The Shadow University, p. 96).
Deconstructing Nehushtan
“There is another sense in which we can ‘burn incense’ to a work of art. We can overmystify it, ascribing to it supernatural or religious functions The passage on the destruction of the serpent image says that ‘it was called Nehushtan.’ The Hebrew is rather ambiguous here, but the King James Version, in what scholars …
Sounds Like Some People I Know
“Many codes explicitly encourage charging a student with sexual harassment even if his intent is innocent . . . The City University of New York warns that ‘sexual harassment is not defined by intentions, but by impact on the subject.’ As Herbert London, a dean and a professor of humanities of New York University, notes, …
How Art Should Be Didactic
“Artistic images can appeal powerfully to the emotions, kindling pity at human suffering or outrage at evil. Art that is ostentatiously didactic, having no other merit than that of the lesson it teaches, generally fails both as art and as teaching. This is often because it starts preaching or lecturing in propositional terms instead of …
Polygamy and Such
An odd skirmish has broken out, and you can note a bit of it at Dale Courtney’s blog here. In the past, we (Dale included) have advanced the argument that to legalize homosexual marriage is necessarily to open the door to polygamous marriage. This used to be laughed at by authorized solons and pundits, but …
More for You, Less for Me
“Restrictions on speech are justified by the assertion of a compelling need to promote freedom for some by limiting freedom for others. To the code writers, as to Marcuse, freedom is a zero-sum game” (The Shadow University, p. 83).
Viva Las Worship
“I have heard soloists in church working the crowd like a lounge singer, striding into the audience with a Las Vegas patter, crooning into the mike, costumed for a screen test.” [Gene Veith, State of the Arts (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), pp. 202]
Apostles of Uplift
“Much Christian art today of the sort sold in bookstores is ‘uplifting’ in a sentimental and optimistic way, as if looking on the sunny side were a cure for the cancer of human sin.” [Gene Veith, State of the Arts (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), pp. 172]
Cherishing the Banned
“On the one hand, the codes claim to cherish free speech and academic freedom, including the freedom to express even the most challenging and offensive ideas; one the other, certain categories of ‘offensive’ speech are banned in order to create a ‘comfortable’ and ‘inclusive’ learning atmosphere” (The Shadow University, p. 79).
Who? Whom?
[Stanley] “Fish openly suggested that he was receptive to the prospect of both ideological indoctrination and ideological intimidation of students. He was equally blunt in responding to the classic claim of free speech absolutists that the beginning of censorship is a perilous ‘slippery slope’ that would result in pervasive and unpredictable restrictions on freedom. ‘Some …