This blog ("weblog") which goes back to Nov. 2005 is more an online scrapbook of essays and quotes from others. Known historically as a "commonplace book", it serves as a repository for whatever I consider useful information along a common theme which I call "cultureplaces". The various excerpts that contain research findings and journalistic commentary also inform the interaction of values and our genetic heritage discussed occasionally among a small group of culterati in the Bay Area.
Sad. I was interested and then he totally lost me when he made the snotty comment about how it isn't surprising which states still allow spanking in schools. I am from Mississippi. Not everyone from a red state is ignorant and religious. I find it not just disheartening that he made that comment, but - quite frankly for me it nullified everything he had to say from that point forward. I just closed the video. He totally invalidated himself by being a thoughtless, egotistical jerk. What a waste. He might have something decent to say but I couldn't bring myself to listen after he made that comment. How is him being insulting to half the population of this country helpful to anybody? He must think his audience is limited to the northern coastlines. And indeed he effectively made his reach much smaller in a matter of seconds. What a moron. He is the intellectual embodiment of the phrase "can't see the forest for the trees." Oh, I'm going to solve all the world's moral problems... blah, blah, blah... right after I wipe my feet on half the population.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to be especially defensive about this statement, close to having a chip on your shoulder. And you made some huge leaps. Harris did not state where spanking is authorized. He did not speak about spanking. He was drawing attention to a practice in 21 states of using a wooden board to beat a student that should be morally outmoded. Are you defending this sort of action?
ReplyDeleteYour extreme push back to his placing physical child punishment that is grounded in religion ("spare the rod, spoil the child") among those that we should criticize, all of us, is a bit baffling. Why launch into a geographical diatribe rather than stay on topic--the factuality of morality?
Your angry response causes me to worry even more about the societal divide in this country.