Years ago John Dewey wrote a book about the relationship between democracy and education, making the claim that the former relies upon the latter. Without an educated citizenry democracy cannot survive. I have been harping on the same theme for many years now and am saddened to say that Dewey was spot on. We are…
One of the sobering consequences of the revolution that has placed electronic toys in the hands of everyone who can hold one is what I would call “D.I.C.” — diminished imaginative capacity. By coining this term I join with others who seem to love to make up names, and especially acronyms, for common events and…
There is a disturbing movement afoot across the country on America’s college campuses. I speak of the growing tendency to exclude certain points of view from being heard. In the name of defending the campuses from what they regard as “hate speech,” numbers of liberal students and faculty members are banding together to make sure…
If we are interested in such things, we can read in Wikipedia the following text about one of America’s “heroes.” Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, better known by the nickname “Joe the Plumber“, is an American conservative activist and commentator. He gained national attention during the 2008 U.S. presidential election when, during a videotaped campaign stop in…
An acquaintance of mine recently urged one of my best friends in the very small rural town in which I live to get a permit and buy himself a weapon. “Everyone is doing it,” he said, including himself and his daughter. I suppose he feels it necessary to be armed to protect himself against would-be…
Strange as it may seem, I want to defend the claim that Christianity is, for all intents and purposes, no longer a vital force in this culture. I would say at the outset, however, that even if it is true that Christianity on life support in our postmodern culture, there are certainly many good people…
The central pillar of Jungian psychology is his notion of archetypes, which he discovered by analyzing his patients’ dreams and a careful study of myths, archaic symbols, and even fairy tales. Jung defines archetypes as follows: “. . .there are present in every psyche forms which are unconscious but nonetheless active — living dispositions, ideas…
When philosophers first started exploring the human mind in a study that eventually became psychology, there was virtual unanimity that the human mind was comprised of a number of “faculties.” This eventually became known as “faculty psychology,” which, I am given to understand, is no longer accepted by all members of the psychology fraternity. I,…
James Madison, who wrote the Constitution in close association with his friend Thomas Jefferson, did not think a Bill of Rights was necessary. Alexander Hamilton agreed and said in a lengthy discussion of a possible Bill of Rights in Federalist Papers #84, “The Constitution is its own Bill of Rights.” These men worried that if…
In the truly remarkable seven-part HBO series on John Adams there is one of those defining moments that almost redeems the American movie-making industry, allowing us to forget for a moment that so many movies today are just technical display with no plot and maximum sex and violence. That moment occurs immediately after the representatives…