History News Network

Departments

Entries by Lester Hunt

Monday, December 21, 2009

I saw James Cameron’s new movie last night. (And it really is Cameron's movie: he gets sole screen credit not only for direction but for writing, and shared credit for producing and editing.) As with Aliens and Titanic, among the villainous characters is a business corporation and a character who obviously represents the (evil) corporate point of view. What makes the business corporation in this movie so evil? Well, it engages in the following practices: using military force to invade and conquer foreign lands, slaughtering wholesale numbers of the inhabitants and burning their dwellings, all in order to steal their property.

Posted on Monday, December 21, 2009 at 1:48 PM | Comments (14) | Top

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Capitalism vs. Tiger Woods

Columnist Ron Hart has an interesting observation on the lessons to be learned from the Tiger Woods scandal (hat-tip to Nick Gillespie):

One great lesson learned is the value of capitalism and its ability to enforce good behavior. Accenture and Gillette are cutting Tiger's pay over this. The supposedly "immoral" free markets are speaking louder and with more reprisal than anyone

Posted on Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 11:50 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Saturday, April 25, 2009

The Ethics of Torture

I guess I agree with what Shepard Smith is saying in this remarkable exchange(start at 1:40): We are America and we don't allow torture: this is not a right and left thing, it's a right and wrong thing. If there has been torture, those who ordered it should be prosecuted, even if it was the president.

If I sound a little reluctant, it's because I see a problem here.

Posted on Saturday, April 25, 2009 at 2:19 PM | Comments (3) | Top

Thursday, April 23, 2009

What is Freedom of Speech?

Last week, Miss California Carrie Prejean, who eventually came in second in the annual Miss USA contest, was asked as part of the competition to give her opinion of gay marriage. Her answer was that though she thought it was great that our society has developed to the point that people can choose to love people of the same sex, marriage should nonetheless be reserved for relationships between opposite sex partners. In this nasty and crudely disingenuous video, the questioner makes it plain enough that he voted against her in part because she took the wrong position on this issue.

Posted on Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 5:37 PM | Comments (11) | Top

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

That "Rightwing Extremism" Report

Dear Republicans, Do you regret creating the Department of Homeland Security yet? Are you ready to apologize?

That's the first thing I thought when I read that DHS report. Like an earlier report from the Missouri Information Analysis Center report that instructed law enforcement personnel to watch for cars with Ron Paul or Libertarian Party stickers, it has the right in something of an uproar.

Posted on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 11:12 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Taxation and Liberty

This was earlier posted on my personal blog, "E pur si muove!"

There are a couple of things that are disturbing about this clip, taken at one of the nation's many Tea (= "taxed enough already") Party protests today (Wednesday).

As a political philosopher, I suppose my reaction might seem eccentric. -- What disturbs me is: "liberty ... what does that have to do with taxes?"

Posted on Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 12:04 PM | Comments (4) | Top

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Piracy: The Free Market Solutions

The following is also posted on my personal blog, "E pur si muove!":

What did the captain and crew of the Maersk Alabama have in common with the victims of the Binghamton murders?

Both were unarmed and defenseless against evil.

In the Binghamton case, this probably had to do with the fact that government offices, such as immigration services centers, tend to be no-gun zones. In the case of the commercial ship, the reasons are more complex.

Jane Jacobs told a story in a brilliant book years ago that is very much to the point here.

Posted on Sunday, April 12, 2009 at 5:38 PM | Comments (15) | Top

Friday, April 10, 2009

What Message Do They Send?

This morning on Fox News Meghan Kelly did a segment on the breaking news that the University of Maryland Senate has voted 32-to-14 to end the practice of a officially-offered prayer at graduation ceremonies.

Kelly and her guest from the Heritage Foundation made some alarmed sounds about threats to religion, displaying this recent Newsweek cover. My first thought was "32-to-14? Don't these people have a quorum rule?" My second was surprise that they still had a graduation prayer. U. of Maryland is obviously a government-funded institution. That was why own university dropped the prayer in 1976, as a result of a complaint from then-student Annie Laurie Gaylor.

Posted on Friday, April 10, 2009 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, November 16, 2008

What Should the Republicans Do?

Jonah Goldberg has a rather interesting piece arguing against the idea that the Repubs can expand their appeal by moving in the direction of being economically conservative but socially liberal. Perhaps he is prompted by a much more ambitious, thoughtful, and interesting essay in which P. J. O'Rourke argues, at times eloquently, that this is just what they should do.

Posted on Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 6:37 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Monday, September 22, 2008

The Case of "The Jewel of Medina"

[This is cross-posted at my own blog, E Pur Si Muove! For links to other stories on these events, please go there.]

The Case of The Jewel of Medina
Philosopher Carlin Romano has an interesting and very sensible discussion of the case of the novel, The Jewel of Medina, which is gaining notoriety even before it is published. (Hat tip to Arts and Letters Daily.) British philosophy blogger Stephen Law has weighed in on it as well.

Briefly, the facts, as they have been reported above and in the opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that originally broke the story, are these...

Posted on Monday, September 22, 2008 at 5:10 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Monday, September 15, 2008

Liberal versus Conservative

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has an interesting new answer to a rather tired old question. (Tip of the hat to Arts and Letters Daily.) Why, a generation of academic researchers have wondered, do so many relatively low-income Americans, especially in rural areas, keep voting for Republicans, even though their class interests requires them to vote for our boys? Why don't they recognize that we are the ones who can look after them? What's the matter with Kansas, anyway?

Posted on Monday, September 15, 2008 at 10:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, September 7, 2008

The Fraying of America: An Explanation

I know this sounds obsessive, but I am still thinking about the flood of invective recently aimed at Sarah Palin and members of her family in the left-leaning parts of the internet and mainstream media. It was rather startling to those of us who were not taking part in it.

Public discourse in this country, whether it involves an election campaign or a Supreme Court nomination, is often a festival of invective, character-assassination, and incivility.

Posted on Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 9:48 PM | Comments (5) | Top

Monday, August 25, 2008

Character is Relevant!

This country has gone through some deep changes about this issue: is a politician's sex life "private" in the sense that it is irrelevant to what we should think about the things he or she does or will do as a "public" official?

Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 at 1:49 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Saturday, March 1, 2008

American Conservatism, RIP?

I took the recent passing of Bill Buckley as the occasion to tell an anecdote about the conservative meltdown here. It's a sort of worm's eye view.

Posted on Saturday, March 1, 2008 at 2:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

"Islamofascism": More Sloppyspeak

Last week, David Horowitz brought his "Islamofascism Awareness Week" campaign here, speaking on campus on Monday. I wasn't there, but I hear that the always-entertaining Kevin Barret created a disturbance and was removed from the hall.

Posted on Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 2:39 PM | Comments (5) | Top

Monday, August 27, 2007

I Finally See "300"

A slightly longer version of this post, with photos and links to cited articles, is on my own blog,
E Pur Si Muove!

Our son, Nat, is about to go away to college, so yesterday I thought it would be a good time to view his favorite movie with him. It's out on DVD. (Later that evening, his buddy Matt came over to help him upgrade the memory on his laptop -- and watch the same movie ... again!)

One thing that makes this movie, about King Leonidas and 3oo Spartans holding off many thousands of Persians at Thermopylae, interesting to watch is the amount of hatred - "hatred" is surely not too strong a word - that was directed toward it when it first came out. It was hated by The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, the President of Iran. Even Norman-Lear-type liberals begin to shake all over and holler when they think about this movie.

Posted on Monday, August 27, 2007 at 11:44 AM | Comments (7) | Top

Monday, June 11, 2007

Not that Kind of Zoo

I've posted a comment here about the movie, "Zoo," a documentary about the incident that resulted in human-animal sex being made illegal in the state of Washington. Since it focuses on the should-it-be-illegal question, I think it would be of interest to visitors to this site. Also, this may be of interest to whom it is interesting.

Posted on Monday, June 11, 2007 at 1:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Virginia Tech Murders: The Debate Begins

I've blogged on the above subject here:

http://lesterhhunt.blogspot.com/

Though it will not contain much that will be news to my colleagues at L & P, what I say there might be of some interest.

Posted on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 at 2:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Oops!

I tried to insert a link for the post I described below, but it didn't work. Here is another try:

http://lesterhhunt.blogspot.com/2007/04/more-on-rude-surly-teenagers.html

Posted on Sunday, April 15, 2007 at 12:40 PM | Comments (3) | Top

More on Rude, Surly Teenagers

I've posted a sort of sequel to my original comments on this subject here. I don't think the new post assumes you have read the original one. I've thought about our "public" education system a lot while our son was an inmate, and now that he is almost out of it (last semester senior year, touch wood!) all this anger is coming out! (Out of me, that is. He didn't mind it too much.)

Posted on Sunday, April 15, 2007 at 12:37 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, April 6, 2007

"Rude, Surly Teenagers: A Defense"

Over at my blog I have a post (see title above) that touches on issues about liberty in parenting. It occurs to me that it might be of some interest to those here:

http://lesterhhunt.blogspot.com/2007/04/rude-surly-teenagers-defense.html

Posted on Friday, April 6, 2007 at 11:50 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, March 24, 2007

The Virtues of Capitalism

If you’re interested in exploring the moral foundations of market institutions, I recommend The Bourgeois Virtues by Deirdre McCloskey (University of Chicago Press, 2006). One thing that makes the book unique is that it’s a defense of markets based on the virtue-ethical tradition (the author calls herself "an Aristotelian libertarian"). She discusses the influence of institutions on moral character, and vice versa. The book is full of little-known (at least to me) historical, cultural, and literary facts. Another unique feature is that it is a non-individualist defense of the market. This of course could be either a strength or a weakness of her account, depending on your point of view. She characterizes her position as “two and a half cheers for capitalism,” thus going a half-cheer further than the neo-con Irving Kristol, but not as far as I would go. I’ll be on an author-meets-critics panel on the book at the Chicago APA on Saturday, April 21. You can read my prepared comments for the panel here:
http://philosophy.wisc.edu/hunt/McCloskey.htm

Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 at 12:22 PM | Comments (4) | Top

Home Newsletter Submissions Advertising Donations Archives Internships About Us FAQs Contact Us All Articles