Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

GARY BAUER - THE AFTERSHOCKS OF GAY MARRIAGE

What Gary Bauer writes, can't be denied.  The "aftershocks" of the California Supreme court's legalization of gay marriage will shake up life as we know it way beyond gay marriage itself.  Bauer says:

. . .  looking beyond the ruling’s most obvious implication, the redefinition of marriage, the decision foreshadows a nation in which all citizens will not only be asked to tolerate same-sex marriage, but be required to promote it. 

The find out where this fight may be headed, ask Crystal Dixon, a former Associate Vice President of Human Resources at the University of Toledo, who was fired for writing a letter to the editor expressing her belief as a black woman that it was inaccurate to compare the homosexual movement to the civil rights movement. Or ask Jon and Elaine Huguenin, who were fined $6,000 by the New Mexico Human Rights Commission for refusing to photograph a homosexual “commitment ceremony.”

Such cases are just the tip of the iceberg. 

BJORN LOMBORG - HOW TO DO THE MOST GOOD IN THE WORLD

The actual title of his Wall Street Journal article is "How to Think About the World's Problems."  He argues that the fortune spent on reducing carbon emisions "could achieve an astounding amount of good in areas that we hear a lot less about."

He writes, for example,

. . . just $60 million spent on providing Vitamin A capsules and therapeutic Zinc supplements for under-2-year-olds would reach 80% of the infants in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, with annual economic benefits (from lower mortality and improved health) of more than $1 billion. That means doing $17 worth of good for each dollar spent. Spending $1 billion on tuberculosis would avert an astonishing one million deaths, with annual benefits adding up to $30 billion. This gives $30 back on the dollar.

Heart disease represents more than a quarter of the death toll in poor countries. Developed nations treat acute heart attacks with inexpensive drugs. Spending $200 million getting these cheap drugs to poor countries would avert 300,000 deaths in a year. . . .

THE DEMISE OF THE HUMANITIES ON UNIVERSITY CAMPUSES TODAY

Christopher Orlet has written an excellent review of Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life by Anthony T Kronman. Key paragraph:

AT ONE TIME the purpose of a university education was to give future leaders an opportunity -- before they shouldered the dull burdens of civic responsibility -- to explore the purpose and value of life. By instilling a strong sense of history, of reason, of logic, of the best of what has been thought and said, a background in the Humanities would prepare a young scholar for whatever may lie ahead.

This, at least, had been the belief going back to Plato's Republic.