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Blog 3 Columns

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Blog 3 Columns

Plato’s Problem with Loving Yourself 0
- Culture
- March 7, 2016
Arguably these days, there’s a lot of self-love going on. Indeed, isn’t that the point of almost all marketing campaigns. Our culture is awash in the love of self. Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily a good thing even for the self. In volume 4 of The Dialogues, Plato argues, “The greatest evil to men, generally, is
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Not Every Slippery-Slope Argument is a Fallacy 0
- March 7, 2016
In critical-thinking, logic, and philosophy classes, students are often taught to detect and avoid something called “the slippery-slope fallacy.” Such warnings are sometimes justified. But at other times they are actually misleading—so much so that rejecting certain arguments as slippery-slope fallacies is itself fallacious. Understanding why is important morally, politically, and psychologically. A search on
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Is the Stand-By-Your-Man Attitude Increasingly a Thing of the Past?0
- Culture
- March 7, 2016
With the news of Nancy Reagan’s death, the media has been peppered with tributes to the wife of America’s 40th President. Despite what the writers of these tributes may think of Mrs. Reagan’s politics or even personal quirks (and yes, she had some), they all seem to agree that she had a major redeeming quality.
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Is ‘Speed Reading’ For Real?0
- Culture
- March 7, 2016
When I was a boy, “speed reading” was all the rage among the adults I knew—the ones who read books, that is. I envied them. Learning to read had been hard enough, but I couldn’t seem to read fast enough to allow time for other things I also wanted to do. If, as I now
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Former Clinton Administration Member: ‘Cruz is Even More Dangerous Than Trump’0
- March 7, 2016
Over the past few months, many have been sounding apocalyptic alarms with the rise of Donald Trump. But in a recent post on his website, Robert Reich—a Democrat—argued that Ted Cruz is actually “more dangerous” than Donald Trump. For those who don’t know, Reich has served in the administrations of three presidents. His latest stint
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Does Homework Still Have Value?0
- Education
- March 7, 2016
We all remember complaining as kids about homework. Those of us who are parents have had it repeated by our own kids, as will you, too, if you become a parent. So it would be wonderful if research were to discover that homework doesn’t do much good. Then we could convince educators to drop the
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Beware the Sombreros of March 0
- Culture
- March 7, 2016
When does a hat become a battleground? When you’re trying to have good, clean fun on a politically-correct campus, that’s when. Last week, reports Catherine Rampell in the Washington Post, two members of Bowdoin College’s student government faced “impeachment proceedings” to be conducted over the weekend: “What heinous transgression did they commit? Theft, plagiarism, sexual
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BBC Headline: ‘Teaching migrants how to behave’0
- Culture
- March 7, 2016
While we’ve already noted that Norway is having to teach its Muslim migrants that it is not okay to rape women, it’s worth pointing out that Finland is also having to do the same. Thus, the BBC headline. As the BBC reports: “Migrants arriving in Finland are being offered classes on Finnish values and how
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A Historian’s Disturbing Take on Why a Civilization Breaks Down 0
- History
- March 7, 2016
In his famous work A Study of History, Arnold Toynbee examines why some civilizations break down. Interestingly, he concludes that the reason for civilizations breaking down is contained within the very reason for their growth: “[T]he very process by which growth is sustained is inherently risky: the creative leadership of a society has to resort
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