What follows is a mostly reprint of an essay I published in April 2005. It is only a bit curtailed, and has had some typos corrected. However, I will add up front a distinction between these two words that only struck me since publication because it was not fully recognized back then. Wisdom and antiwisdom …
Category: knowledge
Apr 09 2024
Why The Decent Must Counter The Screams
The Progressive movement has always known the importance of the scream. Conservatives have, for the most part, been identified as the base of the “Silent Majority.” Indeed, we’ve had it beaten into us as a matter of pride that “we are not like them” by high minded voices such as William F. Buckley Jr. Well, …
Aug 15 2023
Window Of Credibility
“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.” – Attributed to Hassan-I Sabbah, founder of the Hashshashin When contradictions, deceits, and miscellaneous frauds have multiplied past a certain point, the very existence of truth is called into question. This has a curious, anti-intuitive consequence: propositions previously on the borderline of credibility become much more credible. …
Jan 13 2023
Those Stubborn Things
Among the many campaigns being conducted all around us, I deem this one to be critical: the war against immutable facts. You don’t have to be an intellectual giant like Thomas Sowell, one of the most important public intellectuals of the century behind us, to understand that facts trump any and all theories, …
Sep 24 2022
Western Values Too Easily Undermined. How? Why?
The retired Kiwi physician and regular contributor at Crusader Rabbit (CR) who identifies as mawm, brought to our attention the following observation made by Joel Smalley: “and it’s everywhere. can you seriously tell me you have not noticed the astonishing lack of not just competence, but even of the basic knowledge of how literally anything …
Mar 24 2022
The Sane And The Insane
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson pulled off quite a lot of masks yesterday with her non-answer to a single, putatively nonthreatening question posed by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R, TN): Sen. Blackburn: Can you define the word “woman?” Brown Jackson: I’m not a biologist. I’m sure my Gentle Readers, as engaged with current events as …
Feb 11 2022
Arrogance
“Only one thing do I know, and that is that I know nothing,” – Socrates of Athens “All this has the disadvantage of being clean contrary to the observed laws of Nature,” observed MacPhee. The Director smiled without speaking, as a man who refuses to be drawn. “It is not contrary to …