Skip to main content

Would-be autocrats (26 February 2009)

One comes close to sensing in this article a delight in the possibility that tuition hikes, the leveling of the middle class into the depressed poor, might bring with it an end to mass striving and the re-emergence of the aristocratic ideal. Imagine some Republic, where the elites are few and apparent; trusted to roam where they will; spared the indignity of sharing space with noisome lessers; and you will share in every conservative scholar's non-egalitarian dream.

How about let's stick to the progressive plan, people. That is, one which values life enough to not ever give up on the idea of bringing to the fore, EVERY human being's beauty and genius -- not just the few stellar Obamas needed to delight, comfort, and lead the support of an aging, sagging, populace.

(About institutional leadership and spirited teachers "surprising" and "shocking" their hard working, appreciate students: Five words: "Don't taze me, bro!" And maybe seven others: "Thank you, sir!--May I have another!?")

The sixties generation was a great generation because they learned to look to themselves rather than to the establishment -- true Romantics unshackle themselves, in part, by shackling their teachers. Whatever the post-secondary rucus, really explore what you can do with your own journals, discussion groups, and ready access to itunes U. Let's make it so that if there must be a really best, they're the ones freely sharing, loving, and living, outside the scholar's tower.

Link: After Meltdown, Back to School?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Watch out, liberal extremities!

Watch out, liberal extremities! websmith says: “White people and an increasing number of minorities are tired of being called racists by the true racists and more appalled that this loony bleeding has spread from the heart to the brain." This is what many progressives are going to have to get used to hearing -- that THEY are the true racists! I've said this before but '60's liberalism goes down when enough people have decided that, in sum, it was never truly about what minorities, impoverished people wanted/needed, but instead what certain AFFLUENT WHITE PEOPLE wanted to believe those they ostensibly spoke for wanted/needed. They (progressives) will be made to seem, not the most caring, but the most negligent, most truly self-serving. Of course, most democrats in power will not be too afflicted by this, because they're ready to turn on the ’60s too. Why? Because, sad to say, they're getting in mood to want to see the weak and needy set-up as punishment-worthy a...

Conversation about Agulis at the Gene Wolfe Facebook Appreciation Club

James Pepe New Member  ·  20 hrs I’ve been rereading BotNS (this is my second read of it) and I just finished the part where Sev fights Agulis with the avern. I’m interested to hear what people think of the accusations Agilus levels agains Sevarian. Agilus says Sev has wronged him three times. Are we meant to take these accusations seriously? They're very strange. Is this just a last ditch attempt by Agilus to get out of being killed, or is Sev actually guilty of something, either legal, moral, or cultural. Are the powers that Agilus refers to simply that the avern didn’t kill Sev when it wounded him? Here the quote, “First by entrapment. You carried an heirloom worth a villa about the city without knowing what it was you had. As owner it was your duty to know, and your ignorance threatens to cost me my life tomorrow unless you free me tonight. Secondly, by refusing to entertain any offer to buy. In our commercial society, one may set...

Discussion over the fate of Jolenta, at the Gene Wolfe facebook appreciation site

Patrick McEvoy-Halston November 28 at 10:36 AM Why does Severian make almost no effort to develop sustained empathy for Jolenta -- no interest in her roots, what made her who she was -- even as she features so much in the first part of the narrative? Her fate at the end is one sustained gross happenstance after another... Severian has repeated sex with her while she lay half drugged, an act he argues later he imagines she wanted -- even as he admits it could appear to some, bald "rape" -- but which certainly followed his  discussion of her as someone whom he could hate so much it invited his desire to destroy her; Severian abandons her to Dr. Talus, who had threatened to kill her if she insisted on clinging to him; Baldanders robs her of her money; she's sucked at by blood bats, and, finally, left at death revealed discombobulated of all beauty... a hunk of junk, like that the Saltus citizens keep heaped away from their village for it ruining their preferred sense ...