ParisTampaBlog

Although it was difficult at times, Horace Mann succeeded in persuading a majority of his contemporaries that free schools with trained teachers could inculcate desirable social values and simultaneously provide a practical education leading to prosperous and constructive citizenship. Today’s educators are limited to a hope that their proposals might bring about a slight improvement [...]

In his autobiography Self-Consciousness, a “big-bellied Lutheran God” within the young John Updike looked on in contempt as he struggled to give up cigarettes. Many years later the older Updike, now giving up on alcohol, coffee, and salt, put into the mouth of that God the words of Frederick the Great excoriating his battle-shy soldiers—”Dogs, [...]

The Republicans can’t try to convince the country their ideas are better because of that intellectual bankruptcy problem. All they can do is make Barack Obama’s programs look feckless, plunging everyone into so much despair that by next summer the public will be ready to go live in caves and eat squirrel stew. The waste [...]