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The Conservative William F. Gavin writes:

“What we have in the United States today is not an ideological battle, or even a cultural war, but something larger and deeper: a true clash of irreconcilable philosophic views, not just about abortion, but about truth. One of those views encompasses all that is best in the Western tradition from antiquity until now, including the findings of science, and the other holds that everything that is essential to human betterment in the modern world began during the Enlightenment, and everything preceding that was obscurantist, credulous, and bloody… the strategy is always the same: create a climate of doubt about the possibility of objective truth, discoverable by reason; corrupt the inherited intuitive wisdom by which the people have always lived; construct and then promulgate through mass-media entertainment a philosophy that puts an end to all philosophy, destroying civility in its broadest and deepest sense.”[Emphasis mine.]

I really wish I were better equipped to tackle this article, (I do raise some related, opposing points here) but it concerns philosophy, and philosophy is a subject at which I have never been terribly competent. As Paul Graham once wrote: “Most philosophical debates are not merely afflicted by but driven by confusions over words. Do we have free will? Depends what you mean by ‘free.’ Do abstract ideas exist? Depends what you mean by ‘exist.'”

I can grasp a few basic philosophical concepts, but when I try to understand the details, it all turns out as in Graham’s example. This is not to suggest for one moment that philosophy is a waste of time–I would not be so arrogant as to presume all the obviously intelligent philosophers of history were simply wasting time–but only that, for the life of me, I cannot seem to get the real “point” of it. Ockham’s razor suggests that I am too dense for the subject.

At any rate, it is an interesting article. Read it, and form your own conclusions.

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P M Prescott has notified me that he has had trouble posting comments on this blog. They’re not in the “spam” folder, so I do not know what is happening. I shall investigate. In the meantime, if anyone else is having problems, know that it’s not me preventing you from posting; it’s some kind of glitch.

My apologies. I’m looking in to how to fix this.

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Via Eclectic Iconoclast, I read that PBS is going to start interrupting its programs to air commercials. A Time article anticipates PBS’s defense: “They [PBS] still make programming that commercial TV can’t or doesn’t sustain. Put as many car commercials in it as you want, CBS is never going to air Nova on a weeknight.”

Perhaps I am missing something, but I think that this is perfectly true: PBS cannot be said to be just like the other networks, even now. Clearly, they are still attempting to put on programming that the other networks would find it unprofitable to air, and so their plan appears to be: act like the other networks, only make less money.

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I was re-reading Joseph Campbell‘s The Hero with a Thousand Faces today, and this passage caught my eye:

“[T]he symbols of mythology are not manufactured; they cannot be ordered, invented or permanently suppressed. They are spontaneous productions of the psyche, and each bears within it, undamaged, the germ power of its source.”

This reminded me, a little, of what I wrote in my previous post. Was Campbell right? I have no idea–frankly, I cannot say with honesty that I completely understand this, or any of his book. But I thought it interesting.

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Via Andrew Sullivan, a very interesting post by Amanda Marcotte about Sarah Palin’s Paul Revere comments:

“I think it helps to understand that, for right-wing populists, this thing we call “history” is less about real people who did real things in the real world, and more like just the Bible Part II. It’s a myth that can be manipulated to suit their purpose, which is usually to establish themselves as the only Real Americans. When Palin says she got it right, I believe she believes that, because her story wasn’t really about Paul Revere. Her story was a thinly veiled allegory of the Tea Party worldview.”

This is a very astute point, but also slightly misleading, I think. While they do manipulate the myth, it could also be viewed from the perspective that the “myth” is just the product of a Romantic (to use the term in its increasingly archaic sense) mindset. It may not be a propagandistic effort at all, but rather a manifestation of an idealistic Romantic nationalism.

UPDATE: As I thought about it, I realized this issue is sort of related to what I said in the last lines of this post. 

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So, I see they’re releasing a “remastered” version of the original Halo.

I’ve never been a Halo fan, but even if you think it’s the best game ever, do you really need a remastered version of it? I mean, sure, they’ll give it better graphics, but so what? It’s the same thing. What was missing from the first Halo?

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A private Danish rocket was launched yesterday, a move towards the goal of private spaceflight. You can read the details of it here. Generally, I’m all for this kind of thing, but one line in that article gave me pause:

“The goal of Copenhagen Suborbitals, which has been running full-steam since 2008, is to launch people into suborbital space — and to do it on the extreme cheap.”

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In light of this scandal, I felt obligated to revisit an old question of mine: why must all scandals now have the word “gate” conjugated with some key word? I understand the Watergate allusion, but a person investigating what Watergate was based on the use of the term in the vulgate would wrongly think Nixon must have instigated some water-related scandal.

Well, I investigated, and it seems it was William Safire who propagated this. It’s an annoying little thing, and ought to be expurgated. One or two such references are amusing, but in the aggregate they mitigate the humor of the thing.