Tryals

The Academy is biased against them.  So conservatives often say.  They frequently complain that they are not fairly or proportionately represented in the academic world—that is, in the formal institutions of knowledge and higher learning.  This is where the research is done, the learned consensus formed, the next generation of leaders and thinkers molded and taught.  This is where the elite of the well-educated practice their critical thinking skills and gain capacity to chal

Is human nature inherently bad?  Yes. Are human beings fundamentally good?  Yes. Are these contradictory answers?  No, not really.  They are just answers to different questions.  Each might be convincing in its own limited terms. The problem is that the questions are not very good.  Each is designed to elicit only one of two possible answers.  Yes  or no .  Neither one is very useful.  But the questions themselves are not meant to promote useful discussion.  They are rhetoric

Thoughtful people will change their minds.  Or perhaps we should say that people who can’t recognize truth when they see it are likely to change their minds.  (And since they have nothing very solid to stand on, they seem doomed to keep doing so.)  Conservatives, thankfully, do not need to be those kind of people.  They have no reason to change their minds, at least about the things that matter.  They already know the important things that are worth knowing.  And they are c

During a troubling few decades near the end of the Middle Ages, Christ’s vicar on earth discovered that he had two heads.  A crisis to be sure, called the Great Schism.  It began in 1378 in Rome, when the majority of the College of Cardinals, regretting their recent election of a reforming pope, fled back to Avignon—where the papal bureaucracy had until recently been located—and quickly cancelled their unfortunate choice, putting in his place a more amenable candidate.  But t

Conservatives often claim to be in favor of innovation.  Indeed, they are favorably disposed to finding new and creative means of acquiring more of the good things they already have.  Theirs is a profit-friendly notion of progress.  Yet conservatives generally don’t value change.  This is sensible.  Conservatives tend to be elites.  They don’t want a different world, only more of the world that they already possess more of than others.  To them, the best kind of innovation w

Overheard on a public bus : … so like I was saying, God musta been watching over me that  day, cause there’s no way  I coulda walked away from that  crash.  Just no way!  And that’s why I’m ridin’ the bus. That’s quite a story.  Now exactly which god was that? Say what? You suggested a divine intervention in your deliverance.  You even invoked a god who may have been responsible.  Are you giving credit to a specific divinity then? You some kinda wise guy?  Of course I’m serio

We all know a conservative when we see one.  And they know who they are too, without ever having to use the word.  After all, they’re just regular decent folk .  They don’t have to say what they’re for —and lord knows they don’t have to explain  or defend what they’re for—because all the decent folk they know already know what they’re for.  And they certainly don’t have to bother explaining themselves to the rest.  If those softheaded ingrates don’t already get it, they neve