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Sunday, September 23, 2018

GETTING OLD

Once again, I found a five hour stint driving to the meetup place, canvassing, and driving home very tiring, but it was well worth it.  The candidate himself was there to start us off, as well as his mother, and his grade school teacher.  All politics is local.  Six weeks to go.

Meanwhile, I am beginning to believe that Kavanaugh will not make it to the High Court.  If we can take back the Senate, we can hold the seat open for two years until the 2020 election.

This is beginning to feel like the Sixties.  Social and political forces are moving underneath us in ways that are hard to predict.

2 comments:

s. wallerstein said...

As I've mentioned before, I'm more than 10 years younger than you are and I admire your stamina.

Yesterday afternoon I took the metro to a bookstore where I bought Adorno's book on astrology. I decided to walk home, which would have been a normal walk for me 10 years ago, but now is a bit longer than I usually dare to try. However, it was a nice day and I didn't want to face the metro again, so I walked, a little more than an hour and got home with aching feet and an aching back, exhausted and, as you say, getting old.

MS said...

I empathize with you and s. wallerstein. I am 12 years your junior (2 years s. wallerstein’s) and lately I’ve been waking up with a sharp pain in my left hip. I limp about a bit for a few hours until I shake it off.

Today I spent several hours performing my civic duty for the week. I composed a two-page letter summarizing the comments that I have submitted to your blog explaining why I believe Judge Kavanaugh has already committed perjury with respect to his implausible explanation about what he meant by his email stating that Roe v. Wade is not settled law and indicating that his judicial opinions demonstrate that he is not qualified to sit on the Supreme Court.

The main focus of the letter, however, was pointing out what I have argued regarding Mark Judge – that his reluctance to testify indicates that what he remembers actually confirms Prof. Ford’s accusation. He has requested not to be called as a witness because he does not want to have to choose between telling the truth and betraying his teenage and current friend, and committing perjury. I suggested that the Democratic Senators not seek to compel Judge to testify – if push comes to shove and he is forced to testify, I believe he will opt for committing perjury, stating that he does not remember the incident (which, I believe, would be a lie) but testifying that what Prof. Ford is accusing Kavanaugh of is totally contrary to everything he knows about his character, or testifying that he does remember the party, was with Kavanaugh the entire evening, and what Prof. Ford has asserted never happened. I urge the Senators instead to repeatedly and emphatically make the argument that I have outlined – that his reluctance to testify, given his avowed friendship with Kavanaugh, corroborates Prof. Ford’s accusation. I emailed and telefaxed a separate copy of the letter to each of the nine Democratic Senators on the Judiciary Committee. When I was done, I felt a bit like the Richard Dreyfuss character (Kurt Henderson) in American Graffiti – after attaching the cable to the rear axle of the police vehicle as an initiation test to be inducted into the Pharaohs, he shouts “Stand by for Justice!” as they speed away and the rear axle of the police car gets ripped off. (I know, I am romanticizing what I did – it was not nearly as dangerous.)

Ah, the 1960s. It’s de’ja vu all over again.