By Selwyn Duke

Occasionally I like to share with readers mostly forgotten gems of analysis and philosophical thought. Below is the beginning of just such a work: "Music and Morality," a chapter from William Kilpatrick's book Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong. 

Kilpatrick is a great thinker, and this chapter offers much food for thought. Its message will, sadly, not be well received by many today, but is certainly something everyone should take to heart. I suggest you read it and drink deeply from his cup of wisdom. 

No, this chapter is not about the latest dirty lyrics in the latest rap groups latest album (though some are included). Nor does it deal with rumors that the members of such and such a rock group are devil worshipers (though they might be). Rather, it attempts to get at an effect of music that is more basic than the lyrics or the singers persona. We can start our discussion of this effect with the common observation that we tend to learn something more easily and indelibly if its set to a rhyme or song. Advertisers know this and use it so effectively that we sometimes have difficulty getting their jingles out of our heads. But there are more positive educational uses. Most of us learned the alphabet this way and some of our history as well (Paul Reveres Ride, Concord Hymn ). Recently some foreign language courses have been developed which employ rhyme and song as the central teaching method. Similarly, one of the most successful new phonics programs teaches reading through singing.

This raises an interesting possibility. If Johnny can be taught to read through rhyme and song, might he also begin to learn right and wrong in the same way? It seems that something like this did happen in the distant past. As I noted earlier, the Iliad and the Odyssey played a vital role in the formation of Greek youth. But the ability of the Homeric bards to memorize these vast epics was due in large part to the rhythmic meter and repetitive structure of the poems. In turn, these epics were often sung to the audience to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. In short, the foundational cultural messages of the Greeks were conveyed by sung stories. Education in such cultures, writes Kieran Egan of Simon Fraser University, is largely a matter of constantly immersing the young into the enchanting patterns of sound until they resound to the patterns, until they become musically in tune with, harmonious with, the institutions of their culture.

Read the rest here. 

By Selwyn Duke

The death of the intrepid Justice Antonin Scalia has shaken the political world. If his successor’s appointment cannot be delayed until the next presidency, it’s assured that an unassailable hard-left majority will control the Supreme Court. This will mean, conservatives warn, the end of significant Second Amendment rights, curtailment of many religious freedoms and a consistent rubber-stamp for the “progressive” agenda.

Unfortunately, the likelihood of replacing Scalia — the court’s pre-eminent legal mind — with even a pale imitation is slim. For it to happen

• the Senate will have to exhibit fortitude and delay the confirmation of a successor.
• a Republican will have to win the presidency.
• the GOP will have to retain the Senate in Nov., and 24 GOP seats but only 10 Democrat ones are up for grabs.
• the Republican president in office will have to nominate someone not a wolf in constitutionalist’s clothing; the chances of this alone happening are likely less than 50 percent.

The probability of all four of the above coming to pass isn’t great. And, regardless, while we will fill the great Scalia’s position, we’ll never fill his shoes. Yet perhaps the real solution to this problem lies with something Scalia himself said — just last year.

(more…)

By Selwyn Duke

While a Pakistani city was busy banningValentine’s Day, Mother Nature put her own chill on the holiday closer to home: Low-temperature records were shattered in parts of the Northeast, with one area in New York registering a wind chill of minus 114 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Big Apple felt the freeze, setting a February 14 record of -1° F (actual temperature). But that was downright balmy compared to Watertown, N.Y., 300 miles north, where the mercury dipped down to -37° F. Yet it was Amasa, Michigan, and North Conway, New Hampshire, which had the nationwide low, with a spittle-solidifying -40° F.

And you can blame it all on migration across the border — migration of air across the Canadian border, that is. AccuWeather.com writes that the arctic temperatures were assisted “by a southward shift in the polar vortex,” which “is a storm that is typically centered near the North Pole and tends to keep the coldest air trapped in northern Canada. Occasionally, this storm weakens or shifts enough to allow frigid air to plummet southward into the United States.”

Read the rest here. 

By Selwyn Duke

“It doesn’t matter, freedom of speech. Someone was offended, that’s against the law.” These words were actually uttered by a University of Texas at Austin police officer on Tuesday, as he was issuing a citation to a street preacher for “disorderly conduct.”

The kicker? The preacher, an intern with Campus Ministry USA identified only as Joshua, was not even on university property. He was just outside it exercising his First Amendment rights.

And the officer, also not identified but clearly seen and heard in the video below, was plainly outside the law.

Read the rest here. 

By Selwyn Duke

“This is the end of marriage, capitalism and God. Finally!” triumphantly reads a recent Salon title. It’s not exactly an original sentiment. The sickly but self-deifying Friedrich Nietzsche announced in 1882 already that “God is dead”; of course, now, Nietzsche is dead (perhaps eternally?). God? Not so much.

The Salon author is one Jeff DeGraff, a professor and “Dean of Innovation” at the University of Michigan. His thesis is that the “millennials,” those born 1982 through 2004 (approximately), are rejecting organized religion, belief in God, marriage, and capitalism and thus may lead us into some brave new world. He writes in his subtitle, “My fellow boomers might mock millennials, but what if the new generation has the big questions absolutely right?”

Read the rest here.

By Selwyn Duke

George W. Bush and others have often emphasized that Islam is a “religion of peace.” Others view Islam as a "religion of the sword," and they include traditionalist-minded Muslims and mosques. This is evident after the French government recently raided Muslim houses of worship in the country and found “one third of the quantity of war-grade weapons that are normally seized in a year,” as Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve put it.

The mosques implicated themselves “because they are run illegally without proper licenses, they preach hatred, or use takfiri speech," Hassan El Alaoui, one of France’s chief imams, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday; “takfiri” speech is that which levels accusations of apostasy at other Muslims. El Alaoui also reported that the government will shut down between 100 and 160 mosques, approximately five percent of the nation’s 2,600 total. In addition, authorities searched 2,235 Muslim businesses and homes and arrested 232 individuals.

Read the rest here. 

By Selwyn Duke

Some might say it was the handiwork of low-info entertainers. Others could wonder if there’s any other kind. Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, the singer and songwriter who professionally goes by only her first name, scored a Super Bowl first on Sunday: She put on a racially charged half-time performance paying homage to the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, and the divisive Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

The performance was untoward but not unexpected, being a follow-up to a BLM-themed video she released Saturday that included a graffiti-scarred wall bearing the message “Stop shooting us.” Like so many others, Beyoncé is apparently unaware of studies showing that police are more likely to kill white suspects than black ones, with police shootings of the latter having declined 75 percent during the last few decades.

Thus did the singer create a spectacle about which her “friend” Barack Obama could say, “If I had a half-time show, it would look like Beyoncé’s.”

Read the rest here. 

By Selwyn Duke

We certainly associate propaganda and media control with a German government — just not the contemporary one. But this idea may have to reconsidered in light of an admission by a major German ex-media figure that as far as media reportage goes, “The topics about which are reported are laid down by the government.”

The figure, former head of German network ZDF Bonn, Dr. Wolfgang Herles, furthermore said in a recent radio interview that journalists are given directions to craft news that is “to Ms. Merkel’s liking”; obviously referring to Chancellor Angela Merkel, Herles elaborated, stating that today “one is not allowed to say anything negative about the refugees” (Muslim migrants).

Read the rest here. 

By Selwyn Duke

One school system is arming its teachers, and not even the most passionate anti-gun zealot could say it isn’t Okay. The town of Okay in rural Wagoner County, Oklahoma, is becoming one of the first in the state to take the aforementioned action in the wake of a new law allowing certain people to carry handguns on government school property.

And even if criminals don’t read the news, they’ll know to think twice. While schools nationwide have invited trouble with “Gun Free Zone” signs, Okay will erect four campus signs with quite a different message: "Attention: Please be aware that certain staff members at Okay Public Schools can be legally armed and may use whatever force is necessary to protect our students."

Read the rest here. 

By Selwyn Duke

A student is punished for refusing to “stomp on Jesus,” a Christian bakerfaces a year in jail for refusing to cater faux marriages, two men are arrested for reading the Bible aloud near a government building, a school “purges” Christian works from its library. Critics asserting the existence of an institutional anti-Christian bias, and a resultant war on the faith, have often been labeled paranoid. But now two University of North Texas sociologists have produced research showing that just such an agenda exists — among America’s most powerful people.

Professors George Yancey and David Williamson shared their findings in their newly released book So Many Christians, So Few Lions: Is There Christianophobia in the United States? The researchers say that while Christianophobia — which the sociologists define as "unreasonable hatred or fear of Christians” — isn’t common among common people, it does characterize those in the upper echelons of American society. It’s intense, too. The book’s title was apparently inspired by elitist interviewees lamenting how there were “so few lions,” referencing the Roman Empire’s practice of throwing Christians into an arena to be slaughtered by the wild cats. One respondent even remarked that Christians “should be eradicated without hesitation or remorse.”

Read the rest here.