Reflecting on Robert Frost, John F. Kennedy (just three weeks before his assassination) spoke of the corrective power of the arts in times when politics becomes unmoored. From a speech at Amherst College in 1963: When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern,
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Interview conducted at Rockford University by Stephen Hicks and sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship. Part I Hicks: I’m Stephen Hicks, executive director of CEE, and our guest today is Dr. William Kline, an expert on David Hume, the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment philosopher. He spoke today at Rockford University in the Ethical Theory
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Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State (1871) Chapter 1 Who is right, the idealists or the materialists? The question, once stated in this way, hesitation becomes impossible. Undoubtedly the idealists are wrong and the materialists right. Yes, facts are before ideas; yes, the ideal, as Proudhon said, is but a flower, whose root lies in
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From National Post, during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: International tensions spilled into competition on Friday when an Egyptian judoka refused to shake his Israeli competitor’s hand following their bout at the Rio Olympics. Or Sasson stepped forward to shake Islam El Shehaby’s hand after defeating the Egyptian fighter, but El
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[My “Post-postmodern Art” essay was translated into Arabic (text below and PDF version here) by Moin Jaffar Mohammed of Babylon, Iraq, edited by Maha El-Shenhaby, and published in the journal Al-Adeeb Al-Thakafiya. For more of my art-related publications, see my Art page.] فن ما بعد – ما بعد الحدثة كتابة : ستيفن هِكس ترجمة : معين
Arabic translation of my “Post-postmodern Art” essay (updated) Read More »
The long-term estimated death toll from the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India is about 15,000 people. To put that in context, consider that the estimated immediate death toll from the Soviet Union’s 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster is 4,000. The death toll from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear radiation leak in 2011 is zero. And the death toll
The Bhopal Chemical Spill Disaster — Who Is to Blame? [Good Life series] Read More »
Was race a major factor? The table shows the voting percentages in the last three presidential elections for four racial-ethnic groups: Thought 1: White support for the Republican candidate was stable across the three elections (55, 59, 58). But white support for the Democratic candidate declined (43, 39, 37). My takeaway: Trump seems not to
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I know a guy who’s a longtime Cubs fan, a Trump voter, and whose wife is tomorrow giving birth to their daughter. Will this be the best week of his whole life? (By contrast, I imagine there’s a Cleveland Indians fan who was enthusiastic for Clinton but lost a loved one. Must this be that
The Best Week of Someone’s Life Read More »