What is a history of thought? We are often told tales of the progress of thought from one mode to another over the centuries (say, magical – religious – rational – pragmatist – ), and yet no one has ever encountered a society in which any of the supposedly past modes of thought does not remain significantly present; nor are many past or primitive societies not known to have contained, or to contain, at least a few thinkers well ahead of their times. Many individuals come read more

There’s a green cross in Washington, D.C. with the Washington Monument at the juncture (or just below it), the Capitol (or RFK Stadium, may it rest in peace) at the Eastern foot, the Lincoln Memorial at the Western head, the White House at the Northern hand, and the Jefferson Memorial at the Southern hand. Three of the blocks of space formed by the cross are largely filled by city. The one between the Lincoln and the Jefferson is water and grass. And now it contains a new memorial which read more

A referendum will be voted on in Fluvanna County, Virginia, early in 1997. Technically it is to be a referendum on the building of a new courthouse. In a looser sense, it will be a referendum on the value of history. The referendum asks whether an attractive town with a tradition of nearly two centuries should, as has happened to other towns nearby, be abandoned and allowed to decay, or whether we should continue to live in it. In his early essay “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History read more

I recently had a discussion with the editors of a student newspaper at the University of Virginia called the Cavalier Daily. The paper is currently performing an admirable service in its coverage of some questionable judicial proceedings at the university. But the paper printed information which its source had been instructed by the university to keep confidential. I asked the editors whether they opposed the rule that made University Judiciary Committee proceedings confidential. They said they read more

On April 18th the Washington Post ran a book review by Jonathan Yardley lamenting the damage done to our society by deconstruction and pointing out for the umpteenth time that Paul De Man had sympathized with Nazism in his youth.

If you don’t have a very good idea what deconstruction is, don’t worry about it. Neither does Yardley. The idea found in the writings labeled deconstruction, pragmatism, postmodernism, and so on, which draws the most fire is the notion that humans have to read more

My state, Virginia, is doing pretty well in the great grand scheme of things. Sure, we’re only in second place in importing trash and in killing convicts. Several states are outpacing us in both incarceration rates and growth of sprawl. But we’re cutting down forests, defunding education, and selling cigarettes as fast as anybody in the area, and we can stand proud as Virginians with the knowledge that our Commonwealth is the home not only of Oliver North, Ken Starr, Pat Robertson, read more

I went to a duel on a recent evening in a large auditorium at the University of Virginia, with Linda Chavez and the dean of admissions, Mr. Blackburn, speaking on affirmative action. Both had good points, but I’d give Blackburn a clear victory. I’d guesstimate three-quarters of the audience had decided on that outcome in advance. The crowd was slightly rowdy, by UVa lecture-hall standards.

Chavez spoke first. She runs the Center for Equal Opportunity, in DC, and their reports on read more

The living wage campaign as a national phenomenon has grown rapidly. Twenty-nine cities, counties, and school boards have passed explicit living wage ordinances raising the minimum wage for anyone employed directly or indirectly by that body. These wage rates vary, but are often an amount designed to keep a full-time worker’s family of four out of poverty.

A Living Wage ordinance stipulates that the minimum wage level will be adjusted for inflation and cost of living annually. Other cities read more

The Washington Post reported on April 20th that a New York-based human rights group called Human Rights Watch has found that two new super-max prisons in Virginia are marked by racism, brutality, and inhumane conditions, and that, with room to spare in these highest security prisons, state officials are rushing to fill them with prisoners “better suited to less harsh conditions.”

In the view of many advocacy groups, including Amnesty International and the ACLU, ALL prisoners are better read more

Why do kids get shot in schools in the U.S.? The vast presence of guns is one possible contributing factor. So is the violence in U.S. movies, music, books, magazines, and video games. The extreme inequality in wealth in the U.S., poor child raising, high divorce, and low quality schools are other possible culprits. It’s also possible to suspect an American genetic tendency toward violence, but I don’t believe we know enough to address that possibility.

Guns are defended as necessary read more

If you listen to the advertisements of candidates for state delegate from Virginia’s 30th district you may be surprised to learn that socialism is alive and well in this rural section of the piedmont just to the south of booming Northern Virginia and just to the north of Charlottesville where the University of Virginia and strange liberal ideas can be found.

Independent candidate, J.D. “Dori” Callahan is campaigning against socialism. A homemade sign in a yard in Culpeper reads read more

One good reason to read history is to discover that many of the worst aspects of our lives today are very recent inventions. It’s extremely fast today: the time that it takes an innovation of the worst sort to become thought of as the way things have always been.
After WWII incomes over $400,000 were taxed at 91 percent. By stages, this has been reduced to 28 percent. As a result, between 1978 and 1990 the net worth of the Forbes 400 tripled and $70 billion per year was lost in read more

First, it takes life.

Second, it encourages the taking of life and other forms of revenge. Not only is there no evidence that it reduces crime, but it is defended in the same terms that many criminals use to defend their actions.

Third, it is dishonest. If we are going to kill people, we should do so publicly and graphically. Outside of Florida, where the victim’s head sometimes catches on fire in the electric chair, we have made murder look like a tetanus shot. When we hide from ourselves read more

Believe it or not, there was a time in this country, and there soon will be again, when “morality” or “ethics” was not shorthand for cruel talk about sex. When Upton Sinclair said, “My efforts are to find out what is righteousness in the world, to live it, and try to help others to live it,” he was talking about helping huge groups of people out of misery, helping them to lead fuller lives. In other words he was “mixing” ethics with economic issues. read more

Orange County Review
12 Oct. 2000

To the editor:

Tamara Jones’s letter in your Oct. 12 issue advises people to vote in the upcoming elections not with regard to “the economy” but with an eye toward supporting the idea of “the family.” I’d like to argue that families often stand or fall because of economic matters, such as the declining wages most Americans are receiving for increased hours at work.

Jones blames smaller paychecks on taxes, but taxes have not read more

This letter was printed in an edited form in the USA Today on Oct. 10, 2000.
4 October 2000

To the Editor:

I’m glad to hear Philip Meyer is planning to vote, and hope he votes for the candidate I favor. But what are we supposed to make of his list of reasons not to bother voting? He suggests that people do not vote because they are content. No doubt, there are some of these. But I know a lot of people who do not vote because they don’t see a candidate they like and are disgusted read more

The Washington Post reported Oct. 3, 2000, that people locked up in a supermax prison in Virginia were complaining of excessive force, including the use of guns, stun guns, and restraints. But why are such things “excessive”? If you are going to lock people in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day and treat them as worthless, it is unavoidable that they are going to lose their minds and attack you and pelt you with feces and urine. This experiment of isolating people was run nearly read more

Bob Dole wants a WWII memorial built on the Mall in the next three or four years, or else, he fears, no WWII veterans will be around to see it.

Well, if the idea is to have a memorial for WWII veterans to see, I say we build it as fast as physically possible. We won’t use marble, but we could put up a pre-fab memorial constructed with the techniques used in building a Wal-Mart and have it operational by, say, next Thursday. Then – to prove that our failure to honor slaves, Native read more

Gregg Easterbrook’s “The Myth of the Hollow Military” (The New Republic, Sept. 11, 2000) is, if anything, restrained in its rejection of the myth of a weak U.S. military. Easterbrook does do a good job of pointing out that the military would have even more money if it didn’t waste so much – an idea familiar to many conservatives in the area of education – where, however, there isn’t much waste. How often have we heard “Money can’t fix our read more

The biggest threat to continue promoting sprawl — or at least the sprawl-promoting force I find most bewildering and difficult to imagine a remedy for — is also what makes sprawl so much worse in the United States than anywhere else. I don’t have in mind the geography of North America or American “individualism” exactly, not in any general form that could be said to have existed for centuries. The main problem, I suspect, is — and I know I’m writing read more