Thanks Boston fans, for keeping it classy after a devastating loss in OT to the Washington Capitals in Game 7. I watched the game. Caps outplayed them for most of the series and last night. Pretty straightforward.
Oh, but a black guy -who happens to be a good hockey player and a really nice person- scored the wining goal. It didn’t go over well.
Here’s just a taste:
We lost…. To a hockey playing nigger…. What kind of shit is this
There were hundreds of these, apparently. Yikes.
We don’t remember this sort of stuff.
“I realize it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by ‘liberal’ colleagues,” Mr. Rehnquist wrote, “but I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed.”
The memo was disclosed by Newsweek in 1971, on the eve of the Senate floor debate on Mr. Rehnquist’s nomination to the Supreme Court. It caused a firestorm, one that was rekindled when President Ronald Reagan nominated Justice Rehnquist to be chief justice in 1986.
Even if I already knew the dearly departed Chief Justice William Rehnquist was a dirty, rotten scoundrel yesterday, I only found out that he was AGAINST BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION (!!!!!11!1HEADASPLODE!112!11!1__) today. This is the trouble, I suppose, with having been a toddler during the Reagan years: I don’t really have any memory of all the heinous shit he did, like elevating a racist to CJ of the SCOTUS, because my biggest concerns at the time were building forts and going to the playground and trying to quit sucking my thumb and picking my nose (at the same time!) in public.
I don’t suck my thumb anymore but I still pick my nose; I just don’t do it in front of people now. Unless I’m driving, in which case, “Hey, keep your eyes on the road, pal.”
Huh. Didn’t expect a post about our last Chief Justice being for segregation to lead into an anecdote about me picking my nose on the highway. How very postmodern.
While the thrust of my argument to support the community of Attawapiskat was received by many understanding and empathetic ears, it also exposed blatant public racism and harmful ignorant commentary, both of which are elaborated upon below. Going up to nurse in northern Manitoba, I felt I knew what I was getting into – abject poverty, abysmal living conditions, and people suffering from health ailments stemming from these conditions. Sitting comfortably at home, surrounded by familiarity and emotional support, I could deal with it. Cerebral ways of knowing, however, are only one way of knowing, and my knowledge in no way prepared me for the emotional shock and conditions far exceeding my expectations. Anything I knew and thought I was prepared for at home became background fodder as I contended emotionally with what presented itself and felt the oppressive crush of poverty and isolation. In the same way that I was academically prepared for nursing in the north, I knew perfectly well of the racist attitudes of many Canadians towards people in some northern communities. My intellectual acknowledgment of racist realities, however, did little to temper the sting of actually encountering it in the flesh – the responses to my post shocked me despite what I thought I knew was out there. And much like in northern Manitoba, I’m still coming to grips with a reality that’s torturing my soul.
Tortured soul aside, when writing the original Attawapiskat piece I thought a lot about my experiences researching and nursing in the north, and reflected on how these experiences refounded my understanding of the social determinants of health and made real just how determinative they can be. In this follow up essay, I am going to talk a bit about the goals I had intended for the original piece, the commentary generated by the piece and my take on it, as well as justice. In addition, I will reiterate on the social determinants of health, coming full circle to Canadian values and the Canadians of Attawapiskat.
The original post, at root, was about increasing the awareness that some Canadians aren’t doing so well. Writing as a nurse with experience working in healthcare in a Northern First Nations community, I further wanted to give an experienced healthcare practitioner’s account of why this is the case. I wanted to emphasize that the situations in which folks in these communities find themselves are largely a function of historical and current events as well as social and environmental determinants over which they have little control. This is something that is important for everyone to understand because, like it or not, all Canadians are implicated in this system, and unless we acknowledge all of this, there’s little hope the situation will improve. Finally, I wanted to generate some discussion about Canadian values and walking the talk, underlining the difference between the cushy lives of many and the starkly harsh lives of others, and perhaps garner some empathy and justice for fellow Canadians in need.
It was Ben (see his posting on B&S) who initially brought my attention to the comments generated by the original Attawapiskat piece and the polarization of the opinions expressed on Reddit. For the uninitiated, Reddit is an online forum that allows users to vote in favour of or against posts and comments, and much like the opinions expressed, the votes on the comments stemming from the Attawapiskat piece were extremely polarized. Such conspicuous polarization on this forum is unusual, especially considering the fact that the article was received fairly favourably by the larger Reddit Canada community (36 votes in favour to 20 votes against the piece as of January 11th 2012). It is difficult to know how representative r/Canada voters are of the general Canadian voting public, but the opinions expressed in the comments are the real opinions of real Canadians, making them valid enough to talk about. Moreover, racist sentiment and attitudes are worth confronting regardless of how many people hold them. So whether or not we have a microcosm of general Canadian public opinions and attitudes with regard to the debate on Aboriginal policy and moral obligation in Canada, I wanted to take some time to take up the shape of the comments. As such, I think it’s important to have a look at the comments first, and then reconsider them in terms of justice and the social determinants of health I highlighted in my previous post.
There’s a lot to pick apart in the comments, but for the purposes of this essay I’m going to focus on providing a very brief overview only. Some participants offered well-considered and thoughtful remarks reflecting an understanding of history, causation, and moral obligation. Just as many used the forum to sling disdain and promote ignorant and harmful opinions. Rampant throughout were vindictiveness and resentment, as well as hateful characterizations of Aboriginal people as lazy, irresponsible, and entitled. Many racist remarks were made and slurs slung, and participants denied moral responsibility. The idea that “people should pull themselves up by the bootstraps” underscored a lack of understanding of how social and environmental determinants can severely limit people’s opportunities to improve their situation, and confirmed that many determinants are taken for granted and assumed to be options available to everyone. None of this is pretty. Nothing new to those who spend any amount of time on the ‘net, but in this instance, the level was exceptionally remarkable. Some of the more horrible comments were also the most popular and polarized ones in terms of votes, for example, this one received 14 upvotes and 11 downvotes, and this one received 9 upvotes and 10 downvotes. I would encourage readers to have a look at the other comments – their popularity and number of upvotes vs. downvotes are revelatory. Arguably the most tragic occurrence, a few people also displayed internalized racism and oppression, failing to recognize the existence of such phenomena and their insidious effects on identity and well-being. What Ben and I found especially horrible was the degree to which internalized racism seemed to be interpreted by non-Aboriginal people as substantiation for racist sentiment and discrimination. And what struck me as interesting is that, supposedly responding to a piece about how social and environmental determinants affect the trajectory of one’s health and well-being, the significance of these determinants was largely ignored.
So where do we go from here?
Racism 101: Even though race is a social construct, it is still wrong to discriminate racially against someone, and discrimination, both individual and systemic, is learned and can be unlearned. Unfortunately, many people who propagate racism and discriminate against others think of themselves as non-racist and of their actions as non-discriminatory. No one is exempt from this. So if you think you are one hundred percent free of racist or discriminatory thought, it’s time to re-examine because you are wrong.
Justice 101: Since the idea of giving people what they deserve had a strong presence in the comments, and since logic can help us think categorically about social issues, I thought it might be good to broach the topic of justice. Broadly defined, justice is acting in a just and/or fair manner. It can be rather nebulous when trying to apply this concept to practical situations. Fortunately for us, Michael Sandel gives a brilliant and relevant interview on justice and the various ways of understanding it, highlighting the contributions of various philosophical traditions. He not only explains the more abstract stuff eloquently, but also touches on practical ethics and the application of these philosophical traditions to certain questions that are very relevant to the whole Attawapiskat piece and its resulting discourse. One of the theoretical aspects of his lecture that is highly pertinent to our discussion here is the fact that while commonly applied philosophical traditions play a huge part in our debates about what is right, they lack the depth required to provide us with soundly considered answers that are reflective of our complex social existence.
On a more practical note, he talks about collective responsibility, the notion of community and individual identity, and the idea of special responsibility based on particular community membership, and how these fit into justice. For example, he argues that in as much as it is possible and appropriate for one to take pride in a country’s historical achievements (e.g., many Canadians are proud of the Canada Health Act despite having had nothing to do with its establishment or current implementation), it is also possible and appropriate for one to bear a moral responsibility for wrongs previously committed (e.g., contemporary Canadian society is making financial reparations to survivors of the residential school system). Stated explicitly, if it is possible for Canadians to feel pride in something in which they were not directly contributing, it is must be possible to bear a moral burden for wrongs that were not committed by them.
In another example, Sandel elaborates that there are certain cases in which you can be responsible for actions that were not your doing, a stance that is in sharp contrast with the Kantian position that you are only responsible for your own actions. In one case, Sandel discusses the fact that contemporary Germans who were not alive during the holocaust feel it is their moral burden to right the wrongs of their grandparents’ generation, and make reparations to Jewish families because they understand how those events devastated Jewish communities and that lingering trauma from those events are still being felt today. Similarly, some Canadian people make the argument that they are not responsible for what other people did in this country hundreds of years ago, especially given the fact that they didn’t even have ancestors on the continent at that time. This clearly a Kantian approach to ethics, the idea that one is only responsible for one’s own actions that arise from the exercise of one’s will, is difficult to reconcile with the idea of a collective responsibility that extends across communities and across time. Unfortunately, reasoning via this philosophical perspective fails to take into account the fact that the only reason we, as contemporary Canadians, are able to live here and prosper is because of the genocide and colonization of Aboriginal people that occurred. So while we are not responsible for the genocide or colonization, it is incontrovertible that we benefit from the spoils of these events. And it follows that we should take moral responsibility for those historical events.
So go listen to the Sandel podcast. It is well worth its 20 or so minutes in length and will augment our consideration of justice in the current context.
Issues of justice and philosophy aside, my personal and professional stance is that as decent human beings, we should recognize current and historical facts, and work towards helping to strengthen communities who are suffering as a result of historical and contemporary oppression. Furthermore, as decent Canadians, we should do what we can to take care of each other and help any struggling Canadian community regardless of its history. So even if you don’t agree that we have, as contemporary Canadians, some moral responsibility to help repair genocidal and colonial damage done to Aboriginal Canadians, we still have a collective responsibility to help struggling Aboriginal Canadian communities on the basis that they are just that – Canadian communities.
Social determinants of health 101: Justice is important to discuss here, both theoretically and practically, because it is strongly related to social determinants of health, especially with regard to social and distributive justice. Following from the Reddit comments it is clear that a significant proportion of people might not actually understand what social determinants of health are, and how they affect health and well-being. Either that, or they don’t care. To reiterate from the original Attawapiskat piece, the World Health Organization has defined social determinants of health as:
(…)the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, including the health system. These circumstances are shaped by the distribution of money, power and resources at global, national and local levels, which are themselves influenced by policy choices. The social determinants of health are mostly responsible for health inequities – the unfair and avoidable differences in health status seen within and between countries.”
Much like justice, the idea of social determinants affecting the trajectory of one’s health can be rather nebulous. So instead of rattling off the fourteen Canadian social determinants of health, let us firstly appreciate that Aboriginal Status is the one and only grouping of people in Canada for whom specific ethnicity is a social determinant of health. That Aboriginal status is its own social determinant of health is weightily significant, and something demanding serious consideration in addition to “why” questions. So, why is this important? Well, namely because the health of Aboriginal Canadians is inextricably linked to their unique history of colonization and genocide. Adverse social determinants of health stem from discrimination in the form of legislation (e.g, the Indian Act of 1876), community relocations, residential schools, and the sixties scoop, to name a few. Financially, Aboriginal Canadians fare significantly more poorly than non-Aboriginal Canadians, and educationally, achieve a lower level of education. Moreover, crowded living conditions, food insecurity, and infectious and chronic diseases are much more prevalent in Aboriginal Canadians. In short, merely being born an Aboriginal Canadian predisposes one to poor social determinants of health.
As a closing note, I would be happy to meet Canadians in the middle ground. It would be a huge step forward if Canadians took some time to try to unpack the issues surrounding marginalization and oppression in general, and surrounding Aboriginal Canadians in particular. It would also be a huge step forward if we would regularly practice self-reflection, challenging ourselves to ask hard questions, like: “Am I reasoning justly? Am I acting in a discriminatory fashion? Am I being empathetic and understanding of the effects of social determinants of health?” Idealistically, I would be ecstatic if as an end result of self-reflection, empathy and understanding, we saw eliminated, through collective responsibility and equity, the barriers that impede optimal health and well-being for all Canadians.
“a civilization is to be judged by its treatment of minorities.” [m. gandhi]
I pitched The Awl the other day about a story I wanted to write about my trip to New Hampshire and my question for Ron Paul. Basically, the idea was that I’d write about how much I regretted not just asking Paul about the racist newsletters published under his name, and I’d reflect on that, or whatever — some shit. I would write some shit. Choire got back to me and said they were pretty much booked through the year, and I thanked him for listening.
Anyway, whatever. Now we have Andrew Sullivan “defending” Paul as the attacks on his racist record gain renewed traction:
It seems clear to me that Paul has associated with people with some vile views, and profited from it. At best, that is reckless negligence. At worst, it is a blind eye to real ugliness. Neither interpretation flatters Paul. Against that, you have to weigh his character as it has revealed itself over three presidential campaigns, his opponents (whose extremism and bigotry do not need to be ferreted out), and his argument: that domestic liberty requires a drastic re-callibration of our military-industrial complex and an end to the drug war. Voting is not some kind of purist abstraction. Every candidate is flawed. The moment and the argument matter. Viewing it all together, I would not have a problem supporting Paul if I were caucusing in Iowa. And I think a victory will help enormously in reorienting the GOP away from its dangerous foreign policy belligerence.
Yeah, um. No. The solution isn’t to support Paul, the solution is to support Democrats.
But whatever.
The new Marc Maron’s an interview with Donald Glover (Troy from Community — EVERYBODY NEEDS TO WRITE NBC RIGHT NOW TO GET COMMUNITY BACK ON THE AIR FOR 2012, but that’s not what this post is about). At somewhere around the 55 minute mark, they start talking about Chris Rock (Glover did an intership with him before getting a writing job at 30 Rock), and specifically his “Black People VS. Niggaz” bit (below). Figured I’d look it up and watch it again (hadn’t seen/heard it in ages).
Very funny. Not so funny? The top rated comment by Wutwut1n1:
If chris rock was “white” the likes and dislikes of this video would be inverted, especially if he wasn’t “famous” too
For those of you at work and without headphones, Rock starts the sketch out asking “Who’s more racist, black people or white people?” His answer: “Black people… you know why? Because we hate black people too.”
I say it’s at least a tie. Ask youself this: as a white person, how could you not hate white people for WutWut1n1′s type of honky bullshit?
As Rock might put it, crackers gotta go.
Update by Tom: It’s worth pointing out that Rock has since admitted to regretting this bit, largely because it gives cover to stupid racists to be all like, “It’s not racist because Chris Rock said it!”
Also, is this question serious, Ben? White people are way more motherfucking racist than black people are. On that note, kill whitey, forever and always. Love, Tom.
I’m against the death penalty in all cases, because I’m not a barbarian like a great many of my fellow citizens. But I’m especially against it in cases where the guy about to be executed is, you know, probably innocent:
Troy Davis, the death row inmate about whom I wrote last week, has been given an execution date of September 21.
I repeat: Mr. Davis is almost certainly innocent of the crime for which the state of Georgia wants to kill him.
There is no physical evidence connecting him to the crime, seven out of the nine eyewitnesses have recanted, stating that they had been pressured, coerced or frightened into testifying, and jury members have said flat out: “If I knew then what I know now, Troy Davis would not be on death row.”
The police officer that Mr. Davis was convicted of murdering deserves that justice be done — but killing a man who had nothing to do with Officer MacPhail’s death will only compound the injustice horribly.
Now, click the link, sign the petition, draft a letter, and you know, be an Internet hero. Or at least try. Trying is so underrated these days.
Yesterday evening, I was writing an email that began with an account of how Judy Blume’s adult-novel-that-was-mistakenly-read-by-a-lot-of-preteens, Summer Sisters, fundamentally altered my notions of what one’s first sexual experiences were supposed to be like.
I had the AutoCorrect on, because my text-fingers aren’t nimble enough to go it alone. I was trying to describe the part in which the novel’s two main characters (the Summer Sisters) prance around at night on a Martha’s Vineyard beach in white dresses with their two crushes1, when the AutoCorrect changed the phrase “prancing around in white dresses” to “prancing around in White dresses”. I manually corrected the error twice before realizing that my iPhone was changing my colour adjective into one denoting ethnicity.
Curious. I tried to write the same phrase, substituting “white” for “black”, to see if the AutoCorrect would kick in. It didn’t. For good measure, I tried substituting some of the less commonly used colour adjectives/indicators of ethnicity, “brown”, “yellow” and “red”. Predictably, the AutoCorrect did nothing.
So I decided to call Apple’s toll free iPhone support line to see whether the representative might offer some justification, or at least a heartfelt apology. I felt a bit guilty about forcing her to conceal her slight irritation under the veneer of scripted empathy, but she eventually suggested that the autocorrect might be considering “white” as a common last name. She also suggested that I write to apple.com/feedback, but I didn’t/probably won’t do that. Instead, I tried substituting other common Anglo surnames like “smith” and “jones”.
“prancing around in smith dresses”
“prancing around in jones dresses”
No AutoCorrect.
According to “The National Park System Comprehensive Survey of the American Public” that was released last Wednesday,
while the American public has grown increasingly diverse in the last decade, black and Hispanic-Americans remain underrepresented in visits to the 394 National Park Service (NPS) properties.
[...]
Conducted by telephone in 2009, the survey queried 4,103 respondents across the U.S. The results showed that non-Hispanic whites comprised 78 percent of park visitors in 2008–2009. By comparison, Hispanics accounted for 9 percent of visitors, while African-Americans were 7 percent of visitors.
In contrast, the U.S. population in 2010 was 64 percent non-Hispanic white, 16 percent Hispanic, 13 percent African American and 5 percent Asian, with American Indians, Alaska Natives and Pacific Islanders accounting for less than 1 percent each.
Various casual theories are extended about why this is the case, “ranging from the obvious — such as cost and accessibility — to more subtle ones dealing with imagery, identity and what constitutes the ‘appropriate’ way to experience the parks,” but none is really examined in detail. I would think that disparate socioeconomic statuses coupled decreased minority populations in the sorts of areas where national parks are most likely to be found can take the brunt of the responsibility here.
If I had time, I’d try to find a U.S. map of the major national parks and overlay it with one depicting national population density by ethnicity…but I don’t. Maybe next week? (Probably not. Sounds good though, right?)
***
Sidebar: The title of the MSN article where I read about the study is “Where are the people of color in national parks?” How the hell is this phrase — “people of color” — still around? First of all, it’s descriptively inaccurate, since all people outside of an H.G. Wells novel are people of color. More importantly though, it’s somehow supposed to be more racially sensitive than the derogatory expression “colored people.” The problem is, grammatically speaking, “people of color” = “colored people.” It’s the parsing equivalent of rendering “drunken idiots” “idiots of drunkenness.” I’m on to you, Political Correctness!
According to Wikipedia,
Same-sex marriage has been legal in South Africa [emphasis my own] since 30 November 2006, when the Civil Union Act, 2006 came into force, having been passed by Parliament earlier that month. A ruling by the Constitutional Court on 1 December 2005 had given Parliament one year to make same-sex marriage legal. South Africa is the fifth country, the first in Africa, the second outside Europe, and the first republic to legalize same-sex marriage.
In case you’ve forgotten, South Africa prohibited mixed marriage until 1985 and maintained a policy of apartheid — i.e., legally enforced racial segregation — until 1994.
Holy shit, Obama. It’s awkward enough having to listen to you pretend that your religious beliefs prevent you from fully supporting gay marriage. If you don’t obliterate DOMA and all its narrow-minded brethren at a federal level your first month after reelection — when you no longer have anything to lose — you will officially cross the threshold from a political coward to a moral one.
(via – ish)
If black women aren’t what your racist dick wants, then black women aren’t what your racist dick wants. Some dicks don’t even find ladies attractive. That’s totally fine. But your dick’s opinions aren’t science. Neither, while we’re on the topic, is a sampling of the opinions of the dicks of a room full of London u-grads, or whoever it was that provided the preference data that Satoshi Kanazawa misinterpreted as objective leading him to the following line of questioning:
What accounts for the markedly lower average level of physical attractiveness among black women? Black women are on average much heavier than nonblack women. The mean body-mass index (BMI) at Wave III is 28.5 among black women and 26.1 among nonblack women. (Black and nonblack men do not differ in BMI: 27.0 vs. 26.9) However, this is not the reason black women are less physically attractive than nonblack women. Black women have lower average level of physical attractiveness net of BMI. Nor can the race difference in intelligence (and the positive association between intelligence and physical attractiveness) account for the race difference in physical attractiveness among women. Black women are still less physically attractive than nonblack women net of BMI and intelligence.
Even if there was some legitimacy to claiming that there’s an objective form of female attractiveness against which we could compare women of particular races, that’s not evolutionary, or even scientific thinking. That’s completely unfalsifiable Platonism.
Incidentally, races, by the way, are, let me just mention, as much social constructions, if I could just interject here for a second, as they are genetic phenomena. Same goes for intelligence — there’s nothing genetic about the economic and institutional barriers between most black people and good educational / cognitive developmental support (which, especially in early childhood, has a huge impact on adult intelligence). What this is is yet another exercise in trying to use science to rationalize social and political apathy in an unjust world.
Btw, the London School of Economics pays this d-bag.
***
UPDATE: Evolutionary psychology is the most crackpot discipline in the academy right now. It is good for one thing, though. What? you ask. Why BINGO, of course!
UPDATE II: This is from “What is Political Philosophy?” and bears, I think, on the animated discussion taking place in the comments beneath this post:
“The belief that scientific knowledge, i.e., the kind of knowledge possessed or aspired to by modern science, is the highest form of human knowledge, implies a depreciation of pre-scientific knowledge. If one takes into consideration the contrast between scientific knowledge of the world and pre-scientific knowledge of the world, one realizes that positivism preserves in a scarcely disguised manner Descartes’ universal doubt of pre-scientific knowldge and his radical break with it. It certainly distrusts pre-scientific knowledge, which it likes to compare to folklore. This superstition fosters all sorts of sterile investigations or complicated idiocies. Things which every ten-year-old child of normal intelligence knows are regarded as being in need of scientific proof in order to become acceptable as facts. And this scientific proof, which is not only not necessary, is not even possible. To illustrate this by the simplest example: all studies in social science presuppose that its devotees can tell human beings from other beings; this most fundamental knowledge was not acquired by them in classrooms; and this knowledge is not transformed by social science into scientific knowledge, but retains its initial status without any modification throughout. If this pre-scientific knowledge is not knowledge, all scientific studies, which stand or fall with it, lack the character of knowledge. The preoccupation with scientific proof of things which everyone knows well enough, and better, without scientific proof, leads to the neglect of that thinking, or that relection, which must precede all scientific studies if these studies are to be relevant. The scientific study of politics is often presented as ascending from the ascertainment of political “facts,” i.e., of what has happened hitherto in politics, to the formulation of “laws” whose knowledge would permit the prediction of future political events. This goal is taken as a matter of course without a previous investigation as to whether the subject matter with which political science deals admits of adequate understanding in terms of “laws” or whether the universals through which political things can be understood as what they are must not be conceived of in entirely idfferent terms. Scientific concern with political facts, relations of political facts, recurrent relations of political facts, or laws of political behavior, requires isolation of the phenomena which it is studying. But if this isolation is not to lead to irrelevant or misleading results, one must see the phenomena in question within the whole to which they belong, and one must clarify that whole, i.e., the whole political or politico-social order. One cannot arrive, e.g., at a kind of knowledge of “group politics” which deserves to be called scientific if one does not reflect on what genus of political orders is presupposed if there is to be “group politics” at all, and what kind of political order is presupposed by the specific “group politics” which one is studying. But one cannot clarify the character of a specific democracy, e.g., or of democracy in general, without having a clear understanding of the alternatives to democracy. Scientific political scientists are inclined to leave it at the distinction between democracy and authoritarianism, i.e., they absolutize the given political order by remaining within a horizon which is defined by the given political order and its opposite. The scientific approach tends to lead to the neglect of the primary or fundamental questions and therewith to thoughtless acceptance of received opinion. As regards these fundamental questions our friends of scientific exactness are strangely unexacting. To refer again to the most simple and at the same time decisive example, political sciene requires clarification of what distinguishes political things from things which are not political; it requires that the question be raised and answered “what is political?” This question cannot be dealt with scientifically but only dialectically. And dialectical treatment necessarily begins from pre-scientific knowledge and takes it more seriously. Pre-scientific knowledge, or “common sense” knowledge, is thought to be discredited by Copernicus and the succeeding natural science. But the fact that what we may call telescopic-microscopic knowledge is very fruitful in certain areas does not entitle one to deny that there are things which can only be seen as what theya re if they are seen with the unarmed eye; or, more precisely, if they are seen in the perspective of the citizen, as distinguished from the perpsective of the scientific observer. If one denies this, one will repeat the experience of Gulliver with the nurse in Brobdingnag and become entangled in the kind of research projects by which he was amazed in Laputa.”
Yes that’s Leo Strauss. No that doesn’t mean that it’s neoconservative. Strauss is rolling in his grave over how grossly his thought has been twisted by those idiots.
