Chicago Tribune supports George W. Bush

It's no big surprise that the New York Times has endorsed John F. Kerry for president. What is rather odd though is that the Chicago Tribune, not exactly a right-wing rag, has endorsed George W. Bush.

17:07

permalink comment(s) (0)

Dutch weekly De Roskam on gay discrimination

I empathize with all you poor slobs who can't read Dutch. You'll miss out on this excellent editorial by Han Pape, who happens to be one of my journalism mentors. (When I was 18 and had finished grammar school (VWO in Dutch), universities recommended against pursuing an MA in journalism since they figured their own degrees sucked. So I started working for Pape, who at the time was the editor-in-chief of the Almelo department of the Twentsche Courant.)

Han Pape is sort of a left-wing loonie (as opposed to me being a right-wing nutcake, anyway), but I couldn't agree more with this quote from De Roskam, a local opinion news weekly in the Dutch region of Twente.

Money quote:

'Er schijnt een blad te zijn verspreid met voorlichting over homoseksualiteit. Niks aan de hand. Een aantal scholen heeft de bladen retour afzender gestuurd. Nog niks aan de hand. Maar ja, het waren zwarte en reformatorische scholen. En dus was het discriminatie. Terwijl er nog steeds niks aan de hand was. Want natuurlijk sturen scholen materiaal terug dat ze niet bevalt. Zoals openbare scholen een zendingsfolder terug zouden hebben gestuurd en katholieke scholen een abortusbrochure. En de bond van geheelonthouders een kratje herfstbok. Maar in de media doemde het discriminatiespook op. Wat is dat toch in dit land dat als je iets afwijst je meteen discrimineert? (...) Er zijn een hoop lieden die vinden dat ik in zonde leef, maar ik vind het leven van velen hunner eeuwig zonde. Dat we met elkaar van mening kunnen en mogen verschillen, dat er overtuigingen naast elkaar bestaan, dat maakt het beschavingsniveau van een land uit.'

I don't feel like translating everything. However, the final sentence reads: 'The fact that our opinions can and may differ, the fact that it's possible for conflicting opinions to co-exist, is what defines the maturity of a civilization.'

In other words, you're not really being tolerant if you're only tolerant of other tolerant opinions. As I've mentioned, schools refusing a pro-gay magazine have been subjected to quite a lot of criticism.

It really is too bad if you can't read Dutch. You'll miss the part about Pape's possibly gay dog.

16:00

permalink comment(s) (0)

Goodbye, Derrida (2)

Johann Hari explains what was wrong with Derrida. Hari quotes Dale Peck, who says: 'This is a tradition that has systematically divested itself of any ability to comment on anything other than its own inability to comment on anything.'

Which pretty much sums up my quarrel with deconstructivism: it is too extreme, too polarized, even though it claims to abhor 'conflict' in language, and therefore paralysing to rational thought and the progress of science.

(I am so concerned with this since I have been considering to start studying philosophy for a long time. Yet I've been unable to find a university where I can spend most of my time studying real philosophers, rather than the prose of nihilistic people. If there are any people that studied at the UvA, please mail me, as they have an accelerated program that really appeals to me, except the description of the course in culture philosophy, which looks like it was taken from Elsewhere.org.)

I like Hari's conclusion:

'Buried in Derrida's philosophy there are small nuggets of insight: that the structure of language determines our thought much more than we understood before Wittgenstein, and that grand narratives are inherently dangerous unless their exponents admit that they are partial and always doomed to be (at best) necessary fictions. Derrida could have drawn the sane conclusions from this at the start of his career: that we should show a greater degree of scepticism both toward language and narratives than before.'

In other words, and to quote another philosopher: 'Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.'

So in a sense, Derrida went too far in his Twelve Step Program.

12:26

permalink comment(s) (0)