Thought for the Day
May 18, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Back in 1975, after several years of the earliest expression of leftist anti-intellectualism in colleges and universities, Yale commissioned historian C. Vann Woodward to lead a Commission on Freedom of Expression at Yale, and write a report on academic freedom. Here’s one excerpt from the conclusion: The primary function of a university is to discover and disseminate knowledge by means of research and teaching. To fulfill this function a free
»
May 17, 2023 — Steven Hayward
A reminder from the great sociologist Robert Nisbet: “There is no substitute for punishment in a social order, and that means holding human beings accountable, treating them as human and therefore responsible. Concern for human rights is rampant these days, but a right is possible in the strict sense only for beings who can be rationally regarded as responsible. The celebrated dignity of man oozes away in an atmosphere where
»
April 27, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The note this morning in Loose Ends about the possible rising religious belief among the young sent me back to this passage from Angelo Codevilla’s indispensable book The Character of Nations: Western regimes have gone out of their way to deny their peoples’ and polities’ kinship with Christianity—the drafters of the European Union’s constitution rejected references to it vehemently and repeatedly. In America, arguing that America is a Christian country
»
April 21, 2023 — Steven Hayward
I know what you’re thinking: the “liberal mind” is an oxymoron. But in this case I’m channeling Kenneth Minogue’s classic 1963 book The Liberal Mind, which holds up especially well just now. I know I’ve shared the opening of this book on Power Line before, but I checked, and I did so 11 years ago. So time to re-up this spot-on diagnosis: The story of liberalism, as liberals tell it,
»
April 19, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Currently in my reading pile is Milan Kundera’s A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe. It contains a number of old essays and speeches, some from back in the 1960s. This passage, from a speech in 1967 in Prague at the Czech Writers Conference, certainly applies to America today. Given that he had to deliver that speech under the shadow of Communist censorship, drawn your own parallels with today’s
»
April 18, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The great French liberal Raymond Aron, writing in 1950: “Progressivism consists in presenting Communist arguments as though they emanated spontaneously from independent speculation.” Yup, that pretty much sums up our self-styled “progressives” in the U.S. today.
»
April 13, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Adrian Wooldridge, writing in the current issue of The Spectator: The radical left is now presenting a critique of meritocracy that is far more extreme than anything that has gone before it, but which also wields far more cultural heft: a woke assault on meritocracy. It starts by repeating standard leftish complaints about meritocracy: that it protects social inequality by dressing it up as cognitive inequality, thereby adding to the
»
April 11, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Elihu Root, from his lectures on “Experiments in Government,” 1913: In estimating the value of any system of governmental institutions due regard must be had to the true functions of government and to the limitations imposed by nature upon what it is possible for government to accomplish. We all know of course that we cannot abolish all the evils in this world by statute or by the enforcement of statutes,
»
April 4, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The Washington Free Beacon has published Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho’s remarks at the annual gathering of the Texas Review of Law & Politics this past Saturday. In his remarks Judge Ho announced that he is extending his hiring boycott to include graduates of Stanford Law School. Judge Ho’s remarks are worth reading from beginning to end. This is far from the most interesting point he makes, but it is
»
April 3, 2023 — Steven Hayward
In my stray reading I came across a 1952 letter from C.S. Lewis to Owen Barfield where Lewis mentions that he will soon get on to reading the new book from “Lubac,” which Barfield had recommended. I can’t know for sure, but I suspect this is a reference to Henri de Lubac’s 1950 book The Drama of Atheist Humanism, which I’ve been re-reading lately in particular for its side-by-side treatment
»
March 29, 2023 — Steven Hayward
“The trouble about writing satire is that the real world always anticipates you, and what were meant for exaggeration turn out to be nothing of the sort.” —C.S. Lewis, 1945 The Babylon Bee, this week: When satire becomes reality: Nearly 100 Babylon Bee joke stories have come true JUPITER, Fla. – The Babylon Bee has had nearly 100 joke headlines turn into prophecies after the stories eventually came true, the
»
March 28, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Charles Murray speaks for me in this early passage from Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America (2021) about how identity politics broke out from the faculty clubs into every corner of American life today: I didn’t take identity politics seriously for a long time. I thought that the academy was once again indulging in its fondness for recreational radicalism. Surely no one outside academia except the extreme left
»
March 27, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The discouraging findings of the Wall Street Journal poll reported in today’s Daily Chart sent me back to Leo Strauss’s long-unpublished 1941 lecture on “German Nihilism,” in which he offers these highly relevant observations: Nihilism is the rejection of the principles of civilization as such. A nihilist is then a man who knows the principles of civilization, if only in a superficial way. . . I said civilization, and not
»
March 22, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Harvey Mansfield, Harvard’s most prominent conservative on the faculty, is a few weeks away from his final seminar and retirement. It is doubtful the Harvard government department will replace him with someone like him. But partly that is because there is no one else like him. Prof. Mansfield has just taken to the pages of National Affairs with a typically challenging essay on the topic of “common good conservatism,” which
»
March 21, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Gary Saul Morson, writing on “Do Russians Worship War?” in the current issue of Commentary: Americans all too often presume that everyone else aspires to live and think as we do. Others must share our values, if only in secret, or at least be eager to learn them. This is a dangerous attitude to take with any nation or culture, but perhaps especially so with Russians—and never more so than
»
March 15, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Annie Abrams and Roosevelt Montás, writing today in The Atlantic on “The Putative Defenders of Liberal Education Are Destroying It”: At many institutions, liberal education—the kind of education that students pursue for its own sake rather than for its practical or professional value—is in the process of extinction. Instead of a deliberate grounding in the historical, political, and ethical questions that shape our society, much of what passes for liberal education
»
March 14, 2023 — Steven Hayward
I keep getting drawn back to Jeffrey Bell’s excellent 1992 book Populism and Elitism: Politics in the Age of Equality for insights into our current scene. Even though his examples are dated, his overall interpretation and framework for understanding modern politics in democracies everywhere holds up very well. I wish Bell (d. 2018) was still with us to decode the continually developing scene. Here’s one passage that can be easily
»
