The Stand: Expert Witnesses and Ancient Mysteries in a Colorado Courtroom
by Daniel Mendelsohn

I wonder what respect I have to give to sequence when quoting an article. The paragraphs below have been excised in their entirety from the above-linked article. However, they are more sensible as a pair when they are placed in reverse order of their appearance in the full article. Is there a good way to denote this? Perhaps a bracketed ellipsis before each paragraph?

THE ANCIENT POETS who sang of the Trojan War took pains to identify the arkhê kakôn, "the origin of all the evils" that befell the Greeks and Trojans. In the case of Finnis versus Nussbaum, the arkhê kakôn was considerably less lovely to look at than Helen of Troy. It took the form of a referendum, passed in 1992 by fifty-three percent of the voters in Colorado, that created an amendment to the state constitution making it illegal for any state agency to designate homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual "orientation, conduct, practices, or relationships" as the basis for protected legal status. Almost immediately after the measure passed, a group of plaintiffs that included everyone from Martina Navratilova to the cities of Boulder and Aspen (whose gay-rights ordinances would have been nullified by Amendment 2) sought an injunction against it. The injunction was promptly granted by district court judge H. Jeffrey Bayless, and was later upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court, which sent the case back to Bayless for a full trial--the trial in which Nussbaum and Finnis and George were to play their controversial roles.

Because some of the legal strategies pursued by both sides depended on testimony offered by classical scholars, natural law theorists, and specialists in ancient philosophy, the case became a lightning rod for discussion about the relevance of the humanities to "real" life--and, by implication, about the motives and methods of public intellectuals. Not all of this discussion was especially respectful of the life of the mind. There were those--among them writers at The New Republic and The New Yorker--who found something comic in the sight of academic superstars earnestly debating Plato's views on anal intercourse in a Denver, Colorado, courtroom a good 2,300 years after Plato himself presumably rejoined the realm of pure Ideas.

posted by neel master at 10:07 PM

Cool medium
by Christian Parenti

IT'S AN old tale: desire, rebellion, transgression, and everything else sublimated through consumerism. But in Thomas Frank's The Conquest of Cool the story gets a radical new twist. Frank, focusing on the 1960s, charts the rise of what he calls "hip capitalism," the commodification and appropriation of dissent by big business. The Conquest of Cool delivers a devastating blow to standard theories of countercultural revolution.

The usual fable, circulated by academics and popular writers, argues that American bohemia, an old but marginal cultural niche, suddenly and spontaneously exploded like a psychedelic ink bomb in the 1960s, leaving its mark on wide-ranging areas of the cultural landscape. This upheaval, or movement, the story goes, was an organic rejection of the stultifying banality and repression of "mass society," that Levittown of the soul. Allegedly capitalism relied on the aesthetics and structures of order, sameness, and hierarchy for its continued reproduction. So the counterculture -- revolving around the axis of "hipness" -- posed a direct challenge to the business system, but one that was soon outflanked by imitative co-optation. To illustrate their point, subscribers to this myth often cite ads like Warner Bros.' "But the Man Can't Bust Our Music."

Frank doesn't buy it. In The Conquest of Cool he debunks much of standard co-optation theory by unpacking the hidden hand of the business class in creating and popularizing the hip sensibility.

posted by neel master at 4:14 AM

Celebrity According to Woody
by By Glen O. Gabbard and Krin Gabbard

"Krin" is a name? Anyway:

One key to understanding Allen’s representations of the celebrity is the psychology of narcissism, a universal condition that helps ward off the terrible knowledge that death is inevitable. As Ernest Becker has written, the certainty of extinction leads people to invent various immortality strategies. Religion is one. The heroic quest is another. Humans yearn for cosmic significance, to “be somebody,” or to find heroes and heroines who will be remembered long after they are gone. As we grow through childhood and become socialized, the quest for heroism undergoes transformations that disguise it in one form or another; but as Becker has observed, society creates hero systems that provide external validation for each individual who lays claim to his or her own heroic act.

Today our heroes are less likely to be warriors, conquerors, or generals. The criteria for success have been redefined under the pervasive influence of the media. Today’s heroes have successfully manufactured winning images so appealing to the masses as to catapult them into a position of celebrity. The substance behind the image is of little concern either to the celebrities themselves or to those who worship them. As Christopher Lasch has written:

What a man does matters less than the fact that he has “made it.” Whereas fame depends on the performance of notable deeds acclaimed in biography and works of history, celebrity — the reward of those who project a vivid or pleasing exterior or have otherwise attracted attention to themselves — is acclaimed in the news media, in gossip columns, on talk shows, and magazines devoted to “personalities.” ... Success in our society has to be ratified by publicity.

posted by neel master at 3:57 AM

Aggressiveness in Advanced Industrial Society
by Herbert Marcuse

The paradox Marcuse probes here is one of those mundane profundities that entroubulated me so badly in college.

"Normal functioning": I think the definition presents no difficulties for the doctor. The organism functions normally if it functions, without disturbance, in accord with the biological and physiological makeup of the human body. The human faculties and capabilities are certainly very different among the members of the species, and the species itself has changed greatly in the course of its history, but these changes have occurred on a biological and physiological basis which has remained largely constant. To be sure, the physician, in making his diagnosis and in proposing treatment, will take into account the patient's environment, upbringing, and occupation; these factors may limit the extent to which normal functioning can be defined and achieved, or they may even make this achievement impossible, but as criterion and goal, normality remains a clear and meaningful concept. As such, it is identical with "health," and the various deviations from it are to various degrees of "disease."

The situation of the psychiatrist seems to be quite different. At first glance, normality seems to be defined along the same lines the physician uses. The normal functioning of the mind (psyche, psyche-soma) is that which enables the individual to perform, to function in accord with his position as child, adolescent, parent, as a single person or married, in accord with his job, profession, status. But this definition contains factors of an entirely new dimension, namely, that of society, and society is a factor of normality in a fare more essential sense than that of external influence, so much so that "normal" seems to be a social and institutional rather than individual condition. It is probably easy to agree on what is the normal functioning of the digestive tract, the lungs, and the heart, but what is the normal functioning of the mind in love-making, in other interpersonal relations, at work and at leisure, at a meeting of a board of directors, on the golf course, in the slums, in prison, in the army? While the normal functioning of the digestive tract or the lung is likely to be the same in the case of a healthy corporation executive and of a healthy laborer, this does not hold true of their minds. In fact, the one would be very abnormal if he regularly thought, felt, and operated like the other. And what is "normal" lovemaking, a "normal" family, a "normal" occupation?

posted by neel master at 3:51 AM

Getting Along
by Elizabeth Arens

In Two Faces of Liberalism, he assumes the responsibility of bringing this older, more shadowed “second face” of liberalism into the light. Liberalism’s first face, which [LSE professor and author John] Gray identifies with John Locke and, in this century, with John Rawls, is the project of designing a single, ideal, universally legitimate regime. The second face — which he calls modus vivendi or neo-Hobbesianism — is an effort to create institutions that will permit different ways of life to coexist peacefully. The philosophical basis that Gray offers for this approach is the doctrine of value-pluralism, the idea that there are many different human goods, some of which cannot be compared in value. These goods are embodied in ways of life which are not only different, but often incompatible. Some exclude each other logically, others tend to drive each other out in practice. “No life can reconcile fully the rival values that the human good contains,” Gray writes; furthermore, “the span of good lives of which humans are capable cannot be contained in any one community or tradition.” This being the case, what is needed are “common institutions in which the claims of rival values can be reconciled.” While the existence of different and incommensurable ways of life has been the truth of the human experience throughout history, Gray argues that the need for modus vivendi grows increasingly urgent as, through greater mobility and global economic integration, ways of life are more and more commingled.

Historically, liberalism is premised on this very notion — that, given the choice, human beings will lead different lives, and that they should be permitted do so. Gray states this liberal orthodoxy as follows: “conflicts of value are what make liberal regimes legitimate. Liberal regimes enable people whose views of the good life are at odds to live together on terms they can accept as fair.” But Gray argues that many liberal thinkers, including Locke and John Stuart Mill, saw toleration as a means, not an end. Pluralism was a temporary stage in human development in which ideas about the good life could be aired and resolved. Left to their own devices, humans would gradually arrive at a uniform understanding of the best life. Other liberal thinkers, among whom Gray includes F.A. Hayek, Joseph Raz, and John Rawls, held that diversity of views about the good is a permanent feature of human existence. Aware that “the goods of life clash,” these thinkers sought to “state principles of right and justice that stand aloof from these conflicts.” They have attempted to devise a system of political principles that does not stand on any particular conception of the good but rather permits all worthwhile ways of life to flourish. Gray does some of his best work in demonstrating that they have not succeeded.

posted by neel master at 2:50 AM

Which god has failed
by Paul Hollander

Here's another in a long string of articles that accuse Marxists of being self-righteous morally blind relics.

A survey of media responses to the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Communist Manifesto in Society found widespread reverence and “unrestrained celebration.” Many substitute stimulants have been found for the kind of moral indignation Marxism used to systematize and channel. Again Tom Wolfe:

Marxism may be dead and the proletariat has proved hopeless… . But we can find new proletariats … women, non-whites . . . homosexuals, transsexuals . . . pornographers, prostitutes … which we can now use to express our indignation toward the powers that be.

posted by neel master at 2:44 AM

Homosexuals in government
Congressional Record, 1950

You must know what a homosexual is. It is amazing that in the Capital City of Washington we are plagued with such a large group of those individuals. Washington attracts many lovely folks. The sex crimes in the city are many.

In the Eightieth Congress I was the author of the sex pervert bill that passed this Congress and is now a law in the District of Columbia. It can confine some of these people in St. Elizabeths Hospital for treatment. They are the sex perverts. Some of them are more to be pitied than condemned, because in many it is a pathological condition, very much like the kleptomaniac who must go out and steal, he has that urge; or like the pyromaniac, who goes to bed and wakes up in the middle of the night with an urge to go out and set a fire. He does that. Some of these homosexuals are in that class. Remember there were 91 of them dismissed in the State Department. That is a small percentage of those employed in Government. We learned 2 years ago that there were around 4,000 homosexuals in the District. The Police Department the other day said there were between five and six thousand in Washington who are active and that 75 percent were in Government employment. There are places in Washington where they gather for the purpose of sex orgies, where they worship at the cesspool and flesh pots of iniquity. There is a restaurant downtown where you will find male prostitutes. They solicit business for other male customers. They are pimps and undesirable characters. You will find odd words in the vocabulary of the homosexual. There are many types such as the necrophalia, fettichism, pygmalionism, fellatios, cunnilinguist, sodomatic, pederasty, saphism, sadism, and masochist. Indeed, there are many methods of practices among the homosexuals. You will find those people using the words as, "He is a fish. He is a bull-dicker. He is mamma and he is papa, and punk, and pimp." Yes; in one of our prominent restaurants rug parties and sex orgies go on. Some of those people have been in the State Department, and I understand some of them are now in the other departments. The 91 who were permitted to resign have gone some place, and, like birds of a feather, they flock together. Those people like to be known to each other. They have signs used on streetcars and in public places to call attention to others of like mind. Their rug and fairy parties are elaborate.

posted by neel master at 2:43 AM

There is a problem with Blogger, so I can't edit the entry below to tell you that the Baldwin referred to is neither Alec nor Stephen but James.
posted by neel master at 2:37 AM

NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME (EXCEPT THE FBI)

[in early 1997] the U.S. Court of Appeals, in a stunning decision, ruled that the FBI, which monitored Baldwin's civil rights activities and his contacts with alleged communists during the 1960s, may have unjustifiably held back some requested information from author James Campbell, who had sought the files for his 1991 biography of Baldwin, Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin. The Court's 3-0 ruling sharply rebuked the bureau for violating the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by withholding files without furnishing reasons detailed enough to be examined by a court. The court also attacked the FBI for violating Justice Department guidelines in charging copying fees to a scholar.

posted by neel master at 2:36 AM

College Files Open to Official Investigations Give "Significant" Facts, Dean McKnight Says
Columbia University Spectator, 1953

All significant information is given to government investigators in loyalty investigations of Columbia College students or graduates, Nicholas D. McKnight, Dean of Students, announced yesterday.
"Our practice," the Dean [read] out in a prepared statement, "is to furnish the investigators with the scholastic records of the individuals in whom they are interested." He said also that in addition to disclosure of academic records, the Dean's office attempts "to provide accurate pictures of the graduate's qualities and capacities by referring to "personnel folders." "We often refer them to members of the staff for additional opinion and information."

posted by neel master at 2:33 AM