Purdue’s Ethics Expert WE AREN’T EXPERTS here on the ethics of politics, although we grant that there may be such a thing. Politics and ethics seem too juxtaposed in the journalistic firmament for us to manage the intellectual span. Andy Downs, however, is such an expert. He is the director of the Center for Indiana Politics at Purdue University Fort Wayne. The bright and affable Downs is routinely — reflexively, even — quoted by the mainstream…

Baseball Is Back (for Better or Worse) by Mark Franke Baseball is back, finally. It seems the winters here in northeast Indiana get longer and longer, or maybe it’s just that I am getting older and older. I watched several major league baseball (MLB) games on opening weekend and last week attended my first game of the Fort Wayne TinCaps. I should be exhilarated with the start of the new season, but I am beginning…

Beware ‘The Next Big Thing’ by Leo Morris I’m so old that I remember when the Establishment set the rules and rebels tried to break them. Now, we seem to be embarked on a great experiment in which the former rebels are in charge and determined to get rid of all the rules. Sometimes, I think the experiment is to see how outrageous the elimination of norms can get before the public stops going along…

The ‘Envy Thesis’ “Proverbs in many languages agree that the greatest damage done by the envious man is to himself.” — Helmut Schoeck, “Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior” A NOTED LAW PROFESSOR  said something outrageous last week, outrageous even in this age of daily outrages. She said that the politics of American blacks was motivated by unbridled envy. Amy Wax, 69, of the University of Pennsylvania, says blacks harbor “resentment” over Western achievements, that is, those of whites. “I think there is just…

By Adina Moss Was Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address the greatest in our nation’s history? Robert Schlesinger ranks it among the top five. In his list, he also included Thomas Jefferson’s first (1801), Franklin Roosevelt’s first and second (1933, 1937) and John Kennedy’s (1961). James Lindsay places Lincoln’s first (1861) and second (1865) in his list of best inaugurals. Other addresses he included were by Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt (1905), Franklin Roosevelt’s first, John Kennedy and Ronald…

The Perspectiveless Perspective by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. “Just as in the law courts no person can pass judgment who does not listen to the arguments . . . so must a person whose task it is to study philosophy place himself in a better position to reach a judgment by listening to all the arguments.” — Thomas Aquinas (1224-74) Like the character, Meno, from Plato’s dialogue, I entered college prepared to memorize my way through…

Words That Have Failed Us WE KEEP A LIST of dead words, that is, words that have lost meaning through overuse, misapplication and a general inability to illume. I won’t bother you with the full list but here is one example: We do not allow the use of “very.” Anyway, you get the idea. Regular readers will remember that last year we announced the demise of “hypocrisy,” a perfectly innocent word of the most respectable Greek origin that this…

We Can Trust Ourselves by Leo Morris In the current political context, I am more traditional than progressive, although with a few liberal skeletons in my conservative closet. But in my philosophical soul, I am a libertarian, with a fervent belief in individual rights and a tolerance for only the minimum government necessary to protect those rights. A libertarian, not an anarchist, though it can be an admittedly fine line between them, a line I…

Passion Week and Unholy Passions by Mark Franke We are in Holy or Passion Week, the most significant eight days on the Christian calendar. It is a week of remembrance of the original Passion Week which occurred nearly 2,000 years ago. The week proceeds along a very emotional roller-coaster ride for Christians. It begins with Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem amidst a crowd of exuberant worshippers, no doubt made even more enthusiastic with the news…

Campus Cancel Culture:Technological Solipsism? “Ann Coulter Storms Out After Lying to IU Students for 75 Minutes.” — headline in the April 2 Indiana University Daily Student by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. Anyone attentive to the news is aware of students shouting down speakers on college campuses. The incidents at Yale and the University of California’s Hastings College of Law are only the latest examples. That a controversy about speakers exists across higher education is inarguable. The thesis…