yeah I got ya. I have had hyperbolic episodes myself.

by the way: do you mean that enlightened general quote for someone else? (I didn't say that).

Yeah: I would like to get that guy Kagan up one morning and take him up on a ten mile run. Just before breakfast.

the Army was the least racist place I have ever worked in.

you keep saying things like: "but next January they'll be ready to lay down their lives for him?" But honestly, man, in all my time in the Army I never met anyone who thought they were fighting for the president or really gave a damn about him. Even poor white southerners (wait: I was a poor white southerner. How about that? Just realized I used to fit your category when I rist joined up. hehe).

is worth reading through from beginning to end. It is an eye-opener (and it will break your heart).

I immediately thought of something I had said in a class on Plato's Republic. Socrates is arguing against the position that justice is to do good to friends and evil to enemies, and says that a just man will never do evil to anyone (in fact would rather suffer evil than do it). To do evil means for him to lessen the essential integrity of a living nature, to make it less excellent. And I told my class about something I saw on the news once, back when we popped off a bunch of cruise missiles at Libya. And on the news I saw a building where one of those missiles had god off course and struck an apartment building and killed a grandma, a wife, and a five year old child. And the father was there on camera holding the child, and next to him was part of the missile with a "us" on it. And the man was screaming, and according to the interpreter he was screaming: I hate you America! I hate you forever! And I said to my class: see, he was made less excellent as a human being. According to Plato, a just person could not do that. That was the first thing that came to my mind on 9-11. I wondered if he was on one of the planes.

for independent study a good one is:

David Kelley, The Art of Reasoning. New York: Norton and Co. It has a nice paperback edition with self-tests with answers and so forth.

You should be able to find it on Amazon.com. Look in the used book part for even better prices.

I really admire you saying what you did, having the courage to say that. I don't know what else to say but that I respect your honesty.

A buddha bow to you.

As I read him, for Plato religion was what he called a "mythos", a way to frame truth that are inexpressible: to use a zen metaphor, a finger pointing at the moon. What was primary for him was the idea of the good, of quality, a qualitative universe in which quantity was not the defining factor. He seemed convinced you could experience an apprehension of goodness that could only be verbalized through analogy and metaphor. He once wrote that the truth could not be written down, but only developed in a dialogue between two living beings. There is also always an element of playfulness and room for doubt; always he has Socrates say, if these things are true, then these things follow. He has Socrates in the Phaedo say that religous matters cannot be strictly proven, but instead must be approached in a dialectical manner. Religous movements following Plato, from the neoplatonists like Plotinus to christianity, judaism, islam, and all their various subgroups and permutations, all grabbed parts of plato, part of his mythos, for themselves and twisted them to their own ends. Plato stands alone, smiling at them all.

ya I came up the lower class way. i was the first one in my family to ever go to college, and it took me ten years to get my undergraduate degree, primarily for financial reasons. I was always dropping out to go to work--especially after marriage and kids! Grad school, thank goodness, was a scholarship thing (and a very good one: thank you Emory University!).

I wish you could take a class with me!

Plato pointed out basically that THERE is bad news and good news, etc.

in the world too! Plato pointed out basically that is bad news and good news. The bad news is that "evils are many and good things are few". The good news is that there are a few good things. Goodness is real, though apparently heavily outnumbered. But there it still is.

I guess what I mean is I regularly teach people about the frame: I point to it around us in the institution we are in and in our culture. And I do this slowly and in depth. The institution makes a space for me to do that. As long as it allows that, there is something good and alive in it, I think.

creates a space for possible free thinking: whether or not that possibility is realized is found on a case by case basis. What is valuable in the structure of tenure and academic freedom is that is does give a real space that can be taken advantage of. That is perhaps why the right wing has been such a fierce critic of tenure and the traditional university structure. The ongoing battle now is to prevent what is called the "corporate model" of the university. That many or maybe even most do not take advantage of the still free space (indeed, how many take advantage of much anyway?) does not decrease my delighted appreciation for being able to teach courses which raises questions such as Chomsky raises, and to do so in detail and with a thoroughness not possible elsewhere.