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I'm mostly an X-refugee these days, but this gave me a good election-day chuckle.
3 days ago
Secretary Adams could be well served by raising his concern with the Kentucky Department of Education. I also found this humorous earlier today, in my great Commonwealth of Kentucky.
We only had a school board election but it was vote for 3. It was a different polling place as our school district condensed down to 5 locations versus the normal 10
I see it as a GOOD thing. Mistakes like this are hallmarks of people new to the process. There may be people seeking to vote now that may have never considered doing so before.
I had at least 5 people ask me about elections in Indiana while I was at the library today. One came up to the desk and asked why there wasn’t a line out the door and where other poll places were located.
Oh my. That’s kind of humorous and a little alarming. I was disappointed Missouri only had a school board issue for my district. But such is life. What do you think of Jill Lepore’s book about the history of the Constitution called We The People? (I’ve been reading it and have learned much my days of being both a student and a teacher in Christian schools never taught me.) If you aren’t familiar, do you have other favorite books geared towards adults for civic education and political history?
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Oof! That is a little crazy.
This is simultaneously kind of funny and kind of sad.
Wow. I appreciate that people want to participate in the process but…
My state. 🫣 I promise we didn't all need this message but sadly many did.
No municipal elections?
This is funny until you realize how snarky, belittling, and rude this man is. Please consider not amplifying his voice.
I double-checked yesterday that we didn’t have something. The site said it was down due to the shutdown. My polling place looked like it was getting ready for maybe a school board vote. They were actually collecting food. I think it speaks volumes that people are seeking out polling places. I’m very educated about my local government and still checked that nothing needed my attention. Adams needs an attitude adjustment.
Good freaking grief.
It’s the curse of our connected age where people feel a compulsion to have opinions on things that don’t affect them and which they would never previously have known about. I see friends expressing opinions on the New York Mayor race when they live 3 states away and will never visit NYC. Meanwhile we take energy away from our own communities where we could actually have impact.
Oh wow! I wonder if he is at all embarrassed that public school graduates don’t seem to have gotten a solid civics education.
And on another (I hope, less controversial) subject, here I am saying hello to the donkeys this morning.
Athena and Thelonius, currently on guard duty in the duck pen, are always very glad to see me, in the hopes that breakfast will follow shortly...be sure to put on the sound!
1 week ago
Thelenious DONK??!
Oh. So you have and are friendly to donkeys. But where, pray tell, are your elephants? Suspicious and biased!
So cute! They know how to communicate! 😆
Charles McNamara at Commonweal, about classical ideals and how they differ from the Turning Point model: This is so well put that I’m going to excerpt it here and link to the whole, with minimal commentary.
**
Many people, including Charlie Kirk, have correctly diagnosed our colleges’ anemic efforts to produce good citizens. But his prescription of partisan spectacle—what figures like Ezra Klein and Gavin Newsom have euphemistically called his “spirited discourse” and “moxie”—was more ailment than antidote. Practicing politics as Kirk did might be good content, but it is not good education.
Turning Point’s vision of academic debate has been posted across every corner of the internet. In scores of TikTok videos, Kirk “destroys” liberals, “decimates” undergraduates, and “shreds” left-leaning ideas. In punchy YouTube shorts, he asks students to define womanhood and then, if he doesn’t like their answer, “obliterates” them with one-liners. Taken together, these clips reveal a sadistic notion of the life of the mind: combat rather than cooperation, gladiatorial victory rather than patient skepticism.
Since I’m deep in the weeds with Plato this term, I’m struck by how different this combativeness is from Socrates’s own style of debate. In the Apology, he famously calls himself a gadfly, a pesky insect that rouses lazy horses. But elsewhere, as in the Theaetetus, he calls himself a midwife: his role is to help others who are struggling to bring forth new ideas...
But intellectual midwifery has lost favor on the right. In the weeks since Kirk’s murder—which was, to be clear, morally abhorrent and indefensible—the MAGA movement has been quick to present his cruel punditry as a model not just of political life, but also of academic life. Lawmakers in Oklahoma have proposed legislation that would require each public university in the state to build a “Charlie Kirk Memorial Plaza” with “a statue of Charlie Kirk sitting at a table with an empty seat across from him.” Such a memorial, the bill explains, would commemorate Kirk as a “transformative force in empowering young Americans to engage in open, robust discourse on college campuses.”
Turning Point strategically holds its events at universities rather than, say, city parks, implying that its “robust discourse” of decimating liberals and obliterating feminists is somehow academic—rather than partisan—in nature. But monuments like those proposed in Oklahoma will formalize what has been merely implicit until now. These statues will erase the crucial difference between pundits and professors, and they will make official the transformation of college campuses from spaces of open inquiry into arenas for verbal cage-fighting.
In my view, colleges and universities already have monuments to “open, robust discourse.” They’re called libraries. In their quiet stacks, one can find John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice not far from Robert Nozick’s libertarian response, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Library patrons can read Frantz Fanon’s defense of political violence in The Wretched of the Earth, but they can also pick up a copy of Hannah Arendt’s On Violence, her rejection of bloodshed in the pursuit of political power. Spirited disagreement can be found on every American campus. We simply need to pull it off the shelf…
[C]olleges must promote their own literate vision of “robust discourse” and hold firm to their identity and mission against opportunistic political actors. They make a grave, self-destructive error if they accept that intellectual life is best represented by a tent emblazoned with the insincere taunt “Prove Me Wrong.”
…Academic communities thrive on charitable critique and well-documented sources. Politicians—the most successful ones of the current era, at least—thrive instead on dunks and half-truths. Universities must remind the public that they are committed to substantive principles like toleration, moral freedom, and openness to doubt. These virtues, developed over millennia since Plato’s original Academy, are not natural features of any human society. It takes years to instill them in young people, and academics must redouble those efforts or else risk obsolescence…
Rather than simply adhere to “correct” opinions, academics often strive for provisional knowledge that is open to both confirmation and critique. I try to cultivate this particular notion of excellence in my students. They’ll finish my ethics class as reflective thinkers rather than faultless saints. But training young minds to be judicious is hard work, chiefly because we are imparting cultural attitudes, not political viewpoints. The MAGA movement, however, wants to replace this culture of self-reflection with one of partisan fealty. If our institutions trade academic inquiry for political loyalty, we will all end up just where Plato predicts in the Republic’s final books, in which an anxious tyrant tracks down dissidents. And whenever he discovers “some free-thinking people he suspects of rejecting his rule,” he must destroy them.
**
And my minimal commentary?
On the whole, universities have absolutely failed to cultivate this culture of self-reflection. Yes, they have paid lip service to the ideal of “provisional knowledge that is open to both confirmation and critique,” but that ideal has too often been hedged around by Places That You Cannot Go as a Thinker (both on the left, and on the right). Free thinking is dangerous to both ends of the political spectrum. Provisional knowledge is even more dangerous, because it carries with it the horrible threat that you might actually be wrong.
Being wrong, and admitting it, is something that neither left or right seems willing to contemplate. Allowing that possibility, though, is central to classical philosophy and to the project of classical education.
I recognize how difficult it is to say, “I was wrong” when a whole array of pundits who disagree with you will grab that admission and beat you over the head with it online (or even in person). And you can’t expect those pundits to change their ways, especially when algorithms reward them for carrying out the beatings. All you can do is listen to charitable critique, admit error when you find it, and look forward to the next challenge. That is both a spiritual discipline, and intellectual honesty in the classical tradition.
The Gladiator & the Gadfly | Commonweal Magazine
www.commonwealmagazine.org
Heated political debates make for good content, but a good education requires patient deliberation and reflective free-thinking.1 week ago
Yeah…I wouldn’t say “intellectual midwifery” is a strength of most universities these days either.
If you actually watch Charlie Kirk’s full debates, then you would be able to see his kindness and compassion mixed with bravely speaking timeless truths —rather than “cruel punditry”. Maybe you just picked that up from the click bait titles?
It’s endlessly frustrating to see commenters assuming that those who saw cruel punditry must not have watched more than short clips. The assumption that everyone who disagrees with you has only a shallow understanding is a good way to shut down the robust discussion and thoughtful inquiry many claim to want.
I appreciate Susan continuing to have a discussion about a difficult, political topic. Huzzah!! However, I disagree whole-heartedly with the article she choose to share. The author clearly has not watched more of Charlie Kirk's engagement with students than the sound-bites he disparages. He sets up the perfect to argue against the good. He misses the mark completely with his 'why not in the park' idea. Charlie Kirk engaged students on campus because he saw that those campuses were not preparing students to think critically, to have fruitful disagreements, to train in dialogue, to be comfortable with opposing views. Mr. Kirk saw the polls in which students struggled with the cancel culture, felt oppressed by the lack of diversity of opinion, and he met them where they were: on campus. The author speaks of volumes in the library waiting to train the students in these skills and then misses the fact that they are gathering dust in the library because the campus professors never assign them or use them in their courses. If universities were teaching their students the skills the author speaks of and yearns for, Charlie Kirk would not have seen the need to set up his table and microphone.
It would be remarkable if university students were flooding the libraries and reading quality literature. Since many aren’t, I appreciate that CK met college students on their campus and challenged them to think. He always talked about the importance of reading and told students they needed to read a hundred books a year, minimum. I wonder how many professors have encouraged their students to read that many books in a year? That much reading would revitalize our libraries, bookstores and minds!
The commentary reads on point.... if all you did was watch 10-second shorts reposted by youtubers. Watch the whole day. Or even an hour. You will come away with a completely different perspective. Charlie Kirk did not attempt to decimate his opponents. He regularly invited those who disagreed to jump to the front of the line. Once definitions and terms were agreed upon, he allowed his opponent to go first. He found areas of agreement with people who hated him. Did he grow more mature over the years? Of course. Did he listen more and speak less as he grew older? Yes. But he was never what this article pretends he was. Disappointing to see Susan Wise Bauer once again place her flag on such a hill. Count me -- a former imbiber of Bauer's histories -- as a bit more doubtful about the sources from which she draws her inspiration.
This--both the original piece's return to Socrates and your comments, Susan--is the most cogent response I have seen.
My goal is to create safe spaces for people to change their minds. One part of that is not “destroying” or mocking those who do—students, authors, etc. one part is being authentic—recognizing & admitting when I’m wrong or don’t know, being curious & open to other ideas. CK was not teaching, nurturing, or changing minds. Just confusing & humiliating in order to dominate. That’s not debate, & truth doesn’t require such violence or rage.
Excellent analysis. Real debate demands actual listening. Not the delivery of pre-prepared zingers lobbed at people who aren’t actually very knowledgeable about the issues involved. Charlie Kirk was an effective provocateur on behalf of his views, but he wasn’t much good at accepting nuance or finding common ground on difficult topics.
Kristeen McGonigal Thank you, it seems you have beat me to it. I too appreciate the ongoing debate presented by Susan Wise Bauer but disagree completely with this article. He accuses Charlie of cruel pundetry, which I think, now having watched lots of his interactions, is woeful misrepresentation of his style. Charlies brillance, in my view, was his ability to condense a very complex issue into a couple of statements, arguments or questions, which his oponent could interact would. That style certainly made people think, it made me think anyway!! I loved how he would often put down the mic to give others voice, quiet the crowd for them, and let them have the last word.
“…[C]ruel punditry…” ?
I'd love to see both from the author of the article and from Susan (as a historian) a historical, non-political analysis of TPUSA and Kirk. It's fascinating. I follow politics and education quite closely and respectfully, both seem to miss a lot. I can't even put my finger on exactly what it was. Maybe lack of awareness of Charlie's growth and change over time or of his profound intellectual abilities (entirely self taught outside of the university system) or his talent as a political coalition builder. (I was certainly unaware of most of these until after he passed.) TPUSA certainly was click-baity on social media and that's why I didn't follow them, but after Kirk passed I grew tremendously in my respect for him, largely because I remained curious about why he was so popular with a younger generation that I don't have a touch point with. Classical or neo-classical education wasn't moving the needle on helping young men and women navigate towards family building and adulthood. I'm not saying Kirk was perfect, but he was trying to help people younger than him to build a life. Something to consider.
I love a good Socratic Discussion. In my opinion, it’s the highest form of dialogue, even of learning. Charlie Kirk and his ilk are not seeking Socratic Discussion. They’re seeking debate. A completely different animal. Both forms have merit. Both forms should be taught. As I’ve listened and paid more attention to this sort of discourse since Charlie’s assassination, I’ve become more and more convinced that his approach was the correct one for his mission. It would be lovely to see a modern Socrates arise, though I think their crowds would be smaller…perhaps we might all seek to formulate such careful midwifery so that much work can be done.
I know Charles McNamara! He’s a good egg.
Did Charlie Kirk intend it to be an antidote to poor college education? I had never heard that.
Like many others, I didn't know Kirk before his assassination. Given what I've seen of him now, I do think Charles McNamara seems to not wish to understand Kirk's approach. There are others who engage students on campuses, who are more liberal themselves, who follow a more Socratic method, who are then shouted out and accused of hate. Kirk engaged students directly. He didn't try to hide his perspective or views. That is not the same thing as being hateful. I dare say most college professors do the same, given the stats about the number of college students who lie about their beliefs to get better scores. www.facebook.com/share/r/1BoXpKggGT/
There's a beautiful channel called Clint's Reptiles, which sometimes engages in conversations about evolution. Clint is very respectful of creationists and in my view, tries to sympathise and understand their point of view whilst respectfully pointing out the flaws in their arguments whilst trying to construct a 'steel man' - best creationist argument. I sincerely enjoy those who disagree being treated with respect. I'm left, I make no apologies for my snowflakiness, but I know, most people whose politics differs from my own have good reasons for those difference, different priorities, different understanding, different views, as valid as my own. Those, too often, are drowned out by the brayers in the herd. This can be true on both sides (or more, it isn't as simple as 2 sides in reality depending on which priorities or variations thereof you have).
I think where much of the divide in observing Kirk as "cruel" or not, stems from what voices we listen to. It's the pundits who view "destroying" the other guy, not Kirk himself, who have the problem and just want clicks and influence. There have been plenty of exchanges where he is very matter of fact, not cruel. I've watched hours of his exchanges, never did I see him as cruel. That's a strong word. I have seen plenty of commentaries claiming, "he destroys this guy" then I watch. No he doesn't. Kirk simply states facts and engages. If you want to believe the commentators, then ok... he destroyed that guy. If you want to believe that and judge him as cruel, you're free to take that path. But I really think you'd be hard-pressed to articulate specific examples of Kirk being cruel. I've watched, looking for it, to see if the negativity was founded. Instead, I saw someone who stood their ground respectfully, quieted the audience for the sake of negative comments, and delivered truth both matter of factly and sometimes gently. Men don't talk like women, and his matter of fact style might not be for everyone. But he wasn't cruel on any of the hundreds of exchanges I've watched since Sept. Now that a little time has gone by, his more educated opponents feel it safe to start throwing mud. The first wave were the overly emotional types. Now the detractors who publish and have a mic want to direct the left toward criticism this way. The major premise would be true, if there was evidence. But there isn't, unless a spirited dialogue is "cruel." It's the pundits who need the headline: "Kirk Destroys the Left," not Kirk himself, who have the problem. If you believe he was cruel, you've been persuaded to believe this from headline writers and talking heads.
Excellent points. I have been thinking about how many people are so afraid of realizing they may be wrong, that they preemptively defend against the possibility by labeling anyone who is willing to embrace new data, new research, and new-to-me historical context as “woke,” which is used as a slanderous insult instead of what it is—an ability to embrace new information or perspectives—otherwise known as growth.
The article oversimplifies the cultural and moral crisis we face as Americans. The opportunity for thoughtful, respectful, intellectual discourse on college campuses by digging into Socrates, died a few decades ago. Intellectual discourse on college campuses has been hijacked by upside down and completely intolerant liberal ideology for many years now ( ‘men can be women’….) My son has attended a large university for the past several years and he learned from day one that you cannot voice dissent from liberal left faculty on anything, if you want to pass the course. What imaginary college campus is the author describing, where the faculty actually allow for right-thinking students to challenge their woke creeds on anything? Charlie Kirk was an imperfect yet powerful antidote to that. He gave young people the intellectual tools and courage to battle the lies that have permeated college campuses for so many years. Charlie found a way to peacefully engage with disagreement, build bridges and help young people see truth again - but most importantly, he was shining a light on the ultimate Truth - the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I absolutely agree but also note tgat after watching his debates they are debates- not Socratic discussions and nobody has been doing thT
I agree with this for the most part, however, I would not say this is true in most small liberal arts colleges that do instill classical methodology and encourage to just discourse through the core LA classes outside of one's major.
Thank you for bringing such a deeply thoughtful and intellectually stimulating commentary to wider notice. This is about so much more than politics and sound bites. It is past time that we reflect on the ways we think of and engage with “others.”
Instead of going back to the classical tradition for the foundation of righteous discourse in the public square, perhaps we should look to Jesus, who never shied away from calling out wrong and evil, even resorted to name calling (brood of vipers, white washed tombs, etc)... we are a castrated society. We are so sensitive to people's feelings we tolerate evil, and we have become obsessed with vilifying the ones who are actually just telling the truth about right and wrong, albeit in a way that's not always gentle. I'm not going to pretend Charlie was always gentle, always said things in the nicest way, or never was downright rude - but let me ask this, is it more important to speak the truth or to speak in a way that tickles the ears? Obviously the ideal in scripture is to speak the truth in love - but does that mean that it won't offend the listeners for a variety of reasons? Either because of its content or its force or its tone? No. But we speak the truth because of love even if it offends. The classical methodologies of discourse have their place, but they are not by any means the only way that things can or should be said. This whole thread is elitist and nauseating. Talk to normal people who are less educated than yourself and try to recognize the importance of people like Charlie speaking honestly, bluntly, casually, and in ways that may be frowned upon in polite society.
“In my view, colleges and universities already have monuments to “open, robust discourse.” They’re called libraries. In their quiet stacks, one can find John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice not far from Robert Nozick’s libertarian response, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Library patrons can read Frantz Fanon’s defense of political violence in The Wretched of the Earth, but they can also pick up a copy of Hannah Arendt’s On Violence, her rejection of bloodshed in the pursuit of political power. Spirited disagreement can be found on every American campus. We simply need to pull it off the shelf…”. There’s one thing missing - the person who pulls it off the shelf has to be able to *read* it - as in, their reading skills have to have been developed to take in the information and their own personal “repertoire” of books needs to be wide enough that connections can be made. Good connections. If one is not familiar with Plato’s writings, one cannot make a connection to them.