As to the previous post, I wonder if artists, romantics, poets and dreamers (idealists of all stripes) who give up their art or are compelled to re-examine their ideas aren’t susceptible to pursuing the same idealism within politics.

Sandall knows of where he speaks regarding romanticism. He is essentially an artist and film-maker, and it’s tough to imagine an artist in the Western World who hasn’t been influenced by Romanticism. Perhaps also in his experience of pursuing aesthetic beauty, narrative and storytelling, he can illuminate the plight of the Aborginal quite well.

Is it the relation with one’s desires that can determine the limit of one’s ideas?

It’s a matter of debate, and I’ll put this quote up, found here:

“This also meant that the artist is two steps removed from knowledge, and, indeed, Plato’s frequent criticism of the artists is that they lack genuine knowledge of what they are doing. Artistic creation, Plato observed, seems to be rooted in a kind of inspired madness.”

by Rickydavid

Have you read National Geographic lately?

If you’re like me, you’re finding the tone a little heavy-handed, and perhaps stifling of curiousity. Every article ends like the one I just read:

“As the Earth warms, its vast frozen lands are being transformed-and we are only starting to grasp the consequences.”   Coldscapes, Dec. 2007

Pretty soon they won’t have to go exploring anymore.

Here’s my theory: Instead of sticking more to the science and geography parts of its mission, the National Geographic is invested heavily in current intellectual trends (cultural relativity, the certainty of man-made global warming) and so is putting the cart before the horse: the conservation and educational parts of its mission are left to justify themselves…

So… why not just stick to where wonder, awe and mystery meet high standards and rigorous intellectual tradition…in science?

That may be the best way to promote the other goals of conservation and education.

by Daniel Y. Go

Here’s a great rant.

“The galling part of this whole process is that it really has no impact on what we and our professors actually do in our classroom. Perhaps I should not say this publicly. The issue is not one of of being opposed to high standards. We already do have high standards. We believe strongly in pedagogy and teaching excellence. The issue is that the assumptions and thought process behind this sort of modeling is fundamentally wrong-headed, diminishing, rather than enhancing education.”

It can sure get in the way if you’re trying to teach or trying to learn.

uploaded by mattbucher

What the cartoon doesn’t touch on is how much “creative types” can get in the way too.

Addition:  I think it’s going too far, trying to apply libertarian economics onto education, but Milton Friedman on Education is thought-provoking.

Full article here, by Stanley Kurtz.

“Arab tribal warriors aren’t “too egalitarian.” Advocates of race and gender preferences are too egalitarian. Arab tribal warriors aren’t “too individualist.” Strict libertarians are too individualist. The equality and autonomy of Arab tribal warriors are closer to what we find in Hobbes’s state of nature–the sort of individualism that precedes the social contract, not the individualism that follows it.”

…and Islam has largely been the glue uniting these tribes.

“Learning how to understand and critique the Islamic Near East through a tribal lens will open up a new and smarter strategy for change.”

I could be persuaded; it’s another piece of the puzzle anyways… 

So, in Iraq, we thought we could take out Saddam and leave behind a constitutional democracy…ameliorating tribal and religious differences within a national identity with oil revenue greasing the skids?

…because of freedom?

Addition:  Perhaps we can only deepen our understanding of these ideas, because it won’t be long before we may be using them again and forging into the unknown…with important consequences, moral and otherwise.

Law At The End Of The Day has a good roundup here (current link provided).

If Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist, is still receiving death threats for his cartoons, then Fitna, by Dutch director Geert Wilders, is really designed to provoke. 

Not for the faint of heart.

by eclipsechaser (Daniel Lynch)

My limited and over-simplified take on Noam Chomsky is that he offered a profound theory of language: we are not merely a blank slate upon which language is programmed, rather there is a universal grammar or structure common to us all. This greatly deepens and attaches linguistics to philosophical (Enlightenment, Kantian?) and mathematical traditions, and as he has said, perhaps makes linguistics akin to cognitive psychology.

He is a deep thinker and has been supportive of scientific endeavor and has even defended it from postmodern critique. It’s quite possible to see Chomsky in a humanistic and classically liberal vein of thought, perhaps helpfully illuminated in my post about the differences between right and left (Thomas Carlyle and J.S. Mill, choleric conservative and rational liberal).

Yet Chomsky’s criticism of American foreign policy, capitalism, and essentially all forms of power without legitimacy (for which he has a concept of burden of proof) is suspect.

Here’s Wikipedia’s again:

“Critical of the American capitalist system and big business, he describes himself as a libertarian socialist who sympathizes with anarcho-syndicalism and is critical of Leninist branches of socialism. He also believes that libertarian socialist values exemplify the rational and morally consistent extension of original unreconstructed classical liberal and radical humanist ideas to an industrial context. Specifically he believes that society should be highly organized and based on democratic control of communities and work places. He believes that the radical humanist ideas of his two major influences, Bertrand Russell and John Dewey, were “rooted in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, and retain their revolutionary character.”

His moral thinking is deep, but there are obvious dangers in trying to graft such deep ideas onto politics…

If he is classically liberal (and I’m not sure he is), do you think he’s doing classical liberalism any good?

See Also: Wikipedia’s Page, Chomsky’s Home Page.  Chomsky interview here on his theory.

Addition: How his depth as a thinker (moral, linguistic and philosophical) grants legitimacy to his political views is unclear to me.   His political position is one of radical liberalism in my mind, a failed ideology not mainstream classical liberalism.  Martha Nussbaum draws the distinction here:

Martha Nussbaum In Dissent–Violence On The Left: Nandigram And The Communists Of West Bengal