Stanley Fish interviews Dinesh D'Souza: S.F.: Some readers characterized the King’s College, of which you are the president, as “barely above correspondence level,” a place where little science except creationist science is taught, a venue for the promotion of...
Culture
Remembering 9/11
It always bothered me that our president told us to go shopping after the terrorist attacks on 9/11. I felt as patriotic as perhaps ever I did on that day and in its immediate aftermath, and yet I couldn't rally behind a call like that one. In the years since, I've...
Vote for Me!
Today I opened the New York Times to find a little article by Notre Dame philosophy prof Gary Gutting on "What Work Is Really For." At the beginning of his piece, I read, We applaud people for their work ethic, judge our economy by its productivity and even honor work...
Bigotry
From my good friend Brian Collins (with permission): An interesting article by a self-described liberal who argues that the left-ward slant of the entertainment media has shaped the nation's morals. Two salient points: (1) He describes the current cultural...
The Dwarfs Are for the Dwarfs: Stanley Fish the Pragmatic Presuppositionalist
Two weeks ago I had the privilege of presenting a paper on Stanley Fish—here's a recording—to a group of well-trained Bible professors with whom I had warm fellowship: the Bible Faculty Leadership Summit. They welcomed this newbie graciously and gave me good advice...
Stanley Fish on Christian Worldliness
My interpretive community prefers to read this paragraph as a partial but excellent defense of Christian fundamentalism's separation from the world (in the Rom 12:2, 1 John 2:15–17 sense). My interpretive community prefers to read this as a spot-on description of...
“Hotel Pornography and the Market of Morality” —Public Discourse
Catholic public intellectual Robert George and Muslim leader Shaykh Hamza Yusuf put out a call to hotels to stop selling pornography on demand. It harms our society, they say. Villanova law professor Robert Miller agrees, but points out that hotels have to be careful...
This Just In! Britney Spears Offers Her Opinion on the Ideological Bent of the Roberts Court!
About thirteen years ago—toward the end of my undergraduate education—I suddenly realized that there was some TV news I could no longer stomach. I remember noticing it; I honestly had trouble then and now describing just why it happened. But Senator Jay Rockefeller...
David Pogue on the Religious War Among Technology Enthusiasts
David Pogue, entertaining and perceptive and level-headed tech reviewer at the NY Times, proves again why I read every one of his columns in this genuinely helpful post. When you buy a product, you are, in a way, locking yourself in. You’re committing to a brand....
Why Bother to Learn Very Well English? OR, Where Are All the Quechua Majors?
Argument Learning a language after childhood is very difficult, so difficult that language learners require powerful motivation. Why then do people learn German? Chinese? French? What pushes them on? Cultural enrichment is one possible motivation. Intellectual...
A.O. Scott and David Carr of the New York Times Argue Eloquently and Wittily About the Objectivity of Truth and Beauty When it Comes, in Particular, to Movie Reviews
Plato argued about whether beauty hews to any objective standard. We’re still at it. I’m on your side, A.O. I value your reviews because they insightfully lay bare what a movie is saying, helping me understand my culture without having to wallow in it. You grope after...
Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet Anointed Solomon King, and All the People Rejoiced!
I'm writing now about the ascent and demise of King Solomon, and I found this magnificent accompaniment for my writing.