Oh, Texas, Texas, Texas.

The Texas school board has been fixing up the standards for the curriculum.

9:30 – Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present…9:45 – Here’s the amendment Dunbar changed: “explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.” Here’s Dunbar’s replacement standard, which passed: “explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone.”

That’s wonderful, isn’t it? From a list that … Read the rest

Oh Jesus – I give up. Taner’s taken leave of his senses. He’s not ambivalent about liberalism, he’s ditched it entirely.

I don’t know if the institutional forms that constrain communities have to have to take the shape of an external arbiter, a Bureau of Individual Rights in Communities or something. Quite possibly, given our governmental habits. Say it’s so. But then, I would also expect such a Bureau to be sensitive to political negotiations between particular communities concerning what kind of exit procedures will be realized. It wouldn’t just be imposition of a liberal individualist superstructure.

Fucking hell. The human rights body has to be ‘sensitive’ about whether or not the communities will let people leave…

It’s crazy. … Read the rest

And another thing. I replied to Taner’s “We do have proposals to this effect, and they come down to communities having a good deal of autonomy in regulating their own affairs…” with “But again, that treats ‘communities’ as if they were people. ‘Communities’ don’t have affairs; people do, one at a time.” Taner replied with “I find it perfectly sensible to talk about the interests of a corporation, the affairs of a university, or the internal rules of a bridge club. And so with communities.”

Ah yes – but there is a difference. It’s not ‘and so with communities,’ because ‘communities’ are different from corporations and universities and even bridge clubs. The difference is part of what makes them so … Read the rest