I’m surprised it’s only 12. 12 clippings (or hand-typed digital notes from before the internet and PDFs, as long ago as 1988) bearing the name Jean Bethke Elshtain. With the rigor of the University of Chicago and the values of tradition, she caught my attention by the quality of her thought no less than by her distinctive name.
Russell Arben Fox at Front Porch Republic drank more deeply of Elshtain than did I:
I wish I could have known her better, and learned from her more, because far more than any of the other philosophers and theologians I’ve felt inspired to write encomiums to before, Elshtain’s work mixed theory, politics, history, and faith together in a way which mattered to me deeply. Save perhaps Charles Taylor or G.A. Cohen or Fred Dallmayr, I can’t think of another scholar whose intellectual work overlapped with my own professional life that mattered to me more.
Fox has some extended quotations that show Elshtain’s depth and unpredictability.
She has died reposed, and the world is poorer.
2
According to this shameless ad, if the free market comes to wine and spirits sales, somebody’s daddy is going to die. Probably her kitten too. Satisfied, ye Keystone State winebibbers?
(Rod Dreher, who embeds the ad in question)
Because of who my father is, I’ve been able to occupy some seats I never expected to sit in. Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left. There are plenty of statistics that tell us that inequality is continually rising. At the same time, according to the Urban Institute, the nonprofit sector has been steadily growing. Between 2001 and 2011, the number of nonprofits increased 25 percent. Their growth rate now exceeds that of both the business and government sectors. It’s a massive business, with approximately $316 billion given away in 2012 in the United States alone and more than 9.4 million employed.
…
As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering” — feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity.
But this just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place. The rich sleep better at night, while others get just enough to keep the pot from boiling over. Nearly every time someone feels better by doing good, on the other side of the world (or street), someone else is further locked into a system that will not allow the true flourishing of his or her nature or the opportunity to live a joyful and fulfilled life.
(Peter Buffet in the New York Times. H/T Silouan Thompson)
Neither the superintendent nor the court expresses any concern about the massive contradiction that McDowell could order a student to remove a belt buckle because it might create a hostile environment for some other students, while not noticing that the entire school bristles with hostility against Catholics, evangelical Protestants, orthodox Jews, and anybody else who holds that sexual intercourse is to be bound within marriage, between a man and a woman.
Which brings me to my second point. If I hire a man to teach my son economics, I’d be shocked to learn that he’d been using his position to run down my faith ….
(Anthony Esolen, A Pulpit for Bullies: To campaign against the bullying of LGBT people as if disagreement with the gay lifestyle were an evil is itself a form of bullying, at Public Discourse) Professor Esolen is a Classicist, not an attorney, and his opening paragraph may misinterpret the Federal Court outcome:
On June 19, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan ruled in favor of a high school student named Daniel Glowacki, who had charged that his high school teacher, Jay McDowell, had violated his constitutional right to freedom of speech. He was granted one dollar in compensation. The court’s verdict, in vulgar terms, was that the pig had the right to say what he said.
(Italics added) I assume by “pig” that Esolen means Jay McDowell, but I may be mistaken. A $1 damage award, however, is not a slap at Glowacki. Absent proof of “special damages” (e.g., psychiatric bills for the trauma of being ripped by one’s teacher), violation of Constitutional rights only receives “nominal” damages (plus full attorney fee reimbursement). It’s the Supreme Court’s way of saying that “free speech may be ‘priceless,’ but we’re not going to let angry juries assess million dollar damage awards against bullying jackasses like Jay McDowell unless they did a million dollars worth of more tangible harm.” Glowacki’s harm was missing 20 minutes of class, and missing 20 minutes of Jay McDowell sounds like a boon, not a bane.
The decision sounds like a complete vindication of Glowacki:
While the Court certainly recognizes that schools are empowered to regulate speech to prevent students from invading the rights of other students, people do not have a legal right to prevent criticism of their beliefs or for that matter their way of life. Relatedly, a listeners’ reaction to speech is not a content-neutral basis for regulation. While a student or perhaps several students may have been upset or offended by Daniel’s remarks, Tinker straight-forwardly tells us that, in order for school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, they must be able to show that this action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint. Simply put, the law does not establish a generalized hurt feelings defense to a high school’s violation of the First Amendment rights of its students.
(Thomas More Center, quoting the court)
I find no fault whatever in Esolen’s second point. Schools should teach, not indoctrinate. His subtitle rocks, too.
Only yesterday, homosexual sodomy, which Thomas Jefferson said should be treated like rape, was outlawed in many states and same-sex marriage was regarded as an absurdity.
Was that America we grew up in really like Nazi Germany?
In the Catholic schools this writer attended, pornography — let alone homosexual propaganda — would get one expelled.
Was this really just like Kristallnacht?
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 