I am about to start preparing the fourth lecture in the course I will teach this fall, and I am uncertain which of three alternative ways I should choose of introducing students to the opening pages of CAPITAL. I have at one time or another used all three with varying degrees of success.
The first way requires that students be familiar with the novels of Jane Austen and in particular with Pride and Prejudice. The second way requires that students know who Fred Astaire was. And the third way requires that students know what the miracle of transubstantiation in the Catholic mass is.
I am so old and my students are so young but I have not really a clue whether I can count on them to know any of these things, and having to explain them along the way sort of robs the intro of its force.
Perhaps I really have, as they say in the dairy aisle at the supermarket, passed my sell-by date.
54 comments:
Oof, that's a toughie. I would guess that Fred Astaire, who died in 1987, is least likely to ring a bell. You might have better luck with Pride and Prejudice, considering all the pop-culture connections* - or, it could be a toss-up between that and transubstantiation. I'm not sure I could even think of many Catholics who are particularly familiar with that one.
*E.g., Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016), Fire Island (2022)...
Wikipedia: Jane Austen in popular culture - Pride and Prejudice
I am 38 years old and only the reference to transubstantiation would have meant anything to me - and that because I grew up in a Catholic household. I am afraid you will need a more contemporary example to resonate with today's undergraduates. But I think I know where you're going with this, and if so, you may want to think about the virtual (read: online) world most of your students "live in" vs. the material environment that sets the conditions for the new "virtual world.
(removed previous post to correct a typo.)
UNCs current demographic would be more aligned with the Jane Austen or transubstantiation, the latter much less so. While catholicism isn't among the top religious communities on campus, the Newman Catholic Center does house a decent amount of students off pittsboro st.
It's hopeless. Here're are a couple of examples from my own experience, both roughly 5 years ago: 1. I asked a community college class of 25 or so students if they're familiar with Mack the Knife. No one was. 2. One semester I taught two writing classes with a total of 38 students at UC Berkeley, and gave them selections from J. M. Coetzee's novel Elizabeth Costello to read. The fictional character of Costello is an elderly Australian novelist best known for her re-writing of Joyce's Ulysses. Of the 38 students, perhaps 3 had heard of Joyce ("he wrote fiction, didn't he?" one said), and none had read anything by him.--On the other hand, because of the contemporary technology-infested classroom, I had middling success with simply showing brief clips from YouTube and discussing them immediately afterwards. You might consider starting the class with a bit of Astaire; even if it fails to illuminate Marx, you've given the students one of life's greatest gifts. When the director Peter Sellars taught a class at UC Berkeley in the 1980's, he would begin class by playing something of Miles Davis for 5-10 minutes just to (as I recall him saying) get people into the right mood.
Start by saying approximately what you say here:
"I thought to begin with a ref. to Pride and prejudice, where I'd have [summarize pt.]. Then I thought to begin with ref. to Fred Astaire, where I'd have . . . And then I thought I'd begin with a ref. to transubstantiation to make the point . . . BUT then I thought none of my references might mean anything to you. So why don't you, especially those of you who are acquainted with any of my tentative references help me out by suggesting more contemporary examples."
Put a bit of the burden on them and simultaneously be making the point that cultural references have their sell-by date? You'll also get some insight into where the students are coming from. And maybe you yourself would be transubstantiated into the 21st C? It might also get them talking?
Anon @1:30 suggests a good approach, I think.
Another suggestion:
Don't go with any of those references.
Instead, read the commodity fetishism passage about the table taking on magical qualities etc. (I'm not looking up the exact words) and ask the students what they think Marx means or is getting at. This will get the students talking and also begin to foster some back-and-forth and interaction between you and them.
That's a significant part of what they're paying tuition for, after all, the opportunity to have some actual interaction with the professor, esp. in a relatively small class setting, which this will be.
ISTM that there must be a relevant scene from the Marx brothers, where an object that appears to be one thing is actually another: or first appears to be one thing, and then, without any material change, appears to be another due to some human action.
But I can't think of one right now.
Just screen Monty Python's 'Life of Brian' on day one and things will take care of themselves.
Why do you keep referring to having passed your sell-by date?
Are you and above all, the contents you teach, products to be sold in a supermarket?
If your students don't know who Jane Austen is (Fred Astaire is another question), wouldn't that say something about them, not about you?
When you talk about having passed your sell-by-date, you're internalizing the same commodification that Marx or at least the Frankfurt School of Marxism protested against.
If I were you, I'd start out by explaining to my students what you explain above, more or less where you're coming from in philosophical terms and then asking them if they feel you have reached your sell-by-date and if so, what does that mean?
That, for me, would be a class in revolutionary Marxism or at least a revolutionary class in Marxism.
When I was just now thinking about what you might show to introduce some basic aspect of Marx, I remembered not just something one could show to illuminate the Marx's and Engel's account of history in The German Ideology, but which is itself a supreme filmed instance of pedagogy: the history-as-sausage-making scene in Alain Tanner's Jonah Will Be 25 in the Year 2000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8fhqHyRj6M&ab_channel=gaswinck
Since this would be in the fourth lecture shouldn't it be possible for the students to get up to speed on any of those topics if they had some notice?
Pride and Prejudice is available online on some PBS stations. Maybe you can get it in North Carolina. I don't know. Students like movies. As far as the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation is concerned, I suspect that there may be some real 1950 grainy B&W gems on it from Bishop Fulton J. Sheen's weekly grimoire TV shows available on the internet.
Assume they none of the three. Which can you ask them to get up to speed on most quickly BEFORE they come to class? Not Austen. So, pick an Astaire movie and ask to watch before the first class. Or, find a précis of the Catholic dogma and have them read that. (I prefer the first option.)
@Marcel Proust I'd go with the mirror scene. (Or there is that wonderful scene in Coconuts about wage slaves, but that's not really a propos.)
This is a philosophy class with one of the world's foremost experts on Kant and Marx.
He can't just tell the students to read, say, Pride and Prejudice before the next class? It's easy to read and fairly short (according to my memory). Anyway, he wouldn't be asking them to read it in order to write a detailed analysis, just to get the general idea.
Back in my day, no professor had any problems in assigning us books a lot longer and harder to digest than Pride and Prejudice (or any other Austen novel) for the next week.
If the students are incapable of making that kind of minor effort, are they capable of making the greater effort involved in understanding Marx?
They are missing out on an opportunity to take a class with a world class philosopher and that's their loss, not Professor Wolff's. He's not there to entertain a child's birthday party. That's like asking a string quartet to play a Beethoven quartet with
an electric guitar instead of a viola because violas are out of date.
Austen is your best bet given all the good movie adaptations, particularly the one starring Colin Firth.
If I took a class on Marx and the professor made me read Pride and Prejudice so that he could make single point in one lecture I'd be pissed.
I agree in this context with Ridiculousicculus (and I happen to be somewhat closer in age to s.w. than to Ridiculousicculus).
What's at issue here is a single lecture introducing the opening pages of Capital, i.e., the chapter on the commodity and commodity fetishism. There are doubtless a number of different ways one could do this; the refs to Austen, Astaire, and/or transubstantiation are hardly required, even though RPW likes them and has used them in the past. (As I recall, RPW referenced transubstantiation in his YouTube lectures on Marx in this connection, and it didn't require a lot of background explanation.)
In fact this whole dilemma is not really much of a dilemma, because it takes about 30 seconds to describe the basics of the doctrine of transubstantiation. Showing a clip of Fred Astaire dancing solo up a staircase or with Ginger Rodgers would take about two-and-a-half minutes. Describing the plot of Pride and Prejudice would take a bit longer, but probably not substantially so. So there's no real dilemma. It's a tempest in a pedagogical teapot, so to speak.
I believe that Marcel Proust is referring to the mirror scene from Duck Soup:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKTT-sy0aLg
Poor Stevie, he’s being mistreated by the legal system. With Bannon tried and convicted, can Il Duce be far behind?
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2022/07/22/steve-bannon-remarks-outside-trial-murray-newday-nr-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/
How about the mob parley scene from The Godfather. “After all, we are not communists.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AusgsdHCHs
Bannon’s conviction for contempt of Congress set me to thinking, why hasn’t the Jan. 6 Committee subpoenaed Trump, and should they?
I believe they should. If he refuses to honor the subpoena and does not appear, he can be charged with contempt of Congress, as Bannon was. He cannot claim Executive Privilege, because that only applies to testimony of third parties about conversations with Trump while he was in office. Executive Privilege would not apply to his own statements, especially his statements while out of office, in which he continues to insist on the Big Lie that he won the election and it was stolen from him. Conviction entails a sentence of up to 2 yrs. in prison.
Many claim he should not be subpoenaed because if he appears, he will just lie. Fine, then the Committee can refer him to the DOJ for committing perjury, without having to prove whether he intended for the insurrection to occur, the main stumbling block to indicting him. Can they prove he committed perjury? Perjury is defined in 18 U.S.C. § 1621 as taking the oath to tell the truth, and then “willfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes any material mater which he does not believe to be true[.]” Trump would insist that the did not commit perjury because he does believe that he won the election and that it was stolen from him. But he would be confronted with the question, “On what basis, sir, do you insist that you won the election, when in some 30 legal proceedings the courts have concluded that there was no evidence of fraud, no evidence of ballot fixing, and no evidence to support the claim that you won the election whatsoever?” Let him conjure up patently false reasons for his belief under oath. Then let the public decide if his offers of evidence demonstrate that he is lying, and therefore committing perjury, or if they are the hallucinations of a raving lunatic. Either way, he will be publicly disgraced.
I have had good success in preparing my undergraduate students to understand contexts for my arguments by using YouTube video clips, attached to the Moodle web site for my course lecture, and used as footnotes or references to any needing them in the class, or played by prof at start of class on an overhead projector if I am teaching in class.
For Fred Astaire, here is one 2 minute video clip tap dancing with Eleanor Powell:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-b4M8jssX8&ab_channel=docludi2
For Jane Austen, the Pride and Prejudice film is available in 30 brief video clips, so you select the scene from the film most relevant as your context, and put that on Moodle for the class to refer to if they don't get your argument's context fully and need to inform themselves:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXQ01ZkKz64&list=PL2rXa5bazmKorR3dl-hHvfUDT0aSTvvKv&ab_channel=PrideandPrejudice
As these clips are short, they can be played in part or just in case nobody understands your cultural references.
Links to any video clip or lecture are easy to set up on Moodle and a link to some Wikipedia explanation of Catholic transubstantiation doctrine may also be added if you think it may be needed.
By expanding all these background resources and making them conveniently accessible on Moodle in one place to students in their current hurried and harried mode during the continuing pandemic, you increase time that students need to spend outside or before class preparing or after class if they are puzzling back over what you said and exploring the primary sources or cultural context for your argument.
There are many documentaries on Marx and Marxism and videos freely available online which current students may be more inclined to consume than they would to read the primary texts of Capital or any other difficult philosophy. The professor does not have to bring the whole culture or big picture into class for discussion purposes, just short clips or texts that can get students interested in spending more time with Marx's arguments. I have more success with requesting students to watch video clips than getting them to read difficult primary texts, but they want free culture, access to everything and to follow their own schedule rather than my course schedule so that the more distracting footnotes or video clips I put on Moodle, the farther they stray from the arguments of the lectures and focus on other matters that they care about.
I would use Moodle system at UNC as your archive for the course background or footnotes and make these links part of what you assign as student preparation for a class discussion on any topic or forum where they comment online. If they don't know who Fred Astaire is, they should watch the video clip; if they already know his routines, then ignore the link. The trick is to use the online Moodle system to supplement and back up what you want to do in person in class, and provide simple means for students who want to catch up on your context right there on the course menu. You can scan parts of texts and other raw materials for students to use in their writing assignments also, if you open source everything.
Bill Maher did a segment recently on the stupidity of Americans. Students were asked, "Who was the first man to walk on the sun." Ans: "Lance.....somebody."
Or, what is the largest city in Asia? Ans: Europe
So I would go with Astaire - and as a pre-assignment not to watch a whole freaking Astaire movie - I don't think that would work. Just urge them to go to Youtube and a 3 minute "highlights" clip...adding that he was the Michael Jackson of the 30s.
Also I agree with SW. An 88 year old, major professor coming in to teach is nothing less than "HOT"...show them what a serious scholar can do. You haven't reached your sell date...more likely your stride.
I taught briefly and I'm glad it didn't work out. A professor friend of mine, nearly retired, explained to me recently that when students introduce themselves, they first explain which personal pronoun is appropriate to them/her/him. Talk about sell dates.
Prof Couture wrote:
"There are many documentaries on Marx and Marxism and videos freely available online which current students may be more inclined to consume than they would [be] to read the primary texts of Capital or any other difficult philosophy."
I hope you're not suggesting what you seem to be suggesting. There's absolutely no reason to think that students at the place (UNC/Chapel Hill) where RPW is teaching this course are incapable of reading difficult primary works (or difficult secondary works) and no reason to let them off doing so in a course whose whole point, as I understand it, is to read Marx, Freud, and Marcuse (plus some work by RPW).
As for Jerry Fresia's point re when one hits one's stride, I suppose in rare cases that happens in the late 80s, but the idea that most people, incl academics, "hit their stride" at 88 is simply false.
P.s. If I were teaching, I wouldn't be bothered at all by students mentioning their preferred pronouns or by, for instance, referring to someone who wants to be called "they" as "they" (or whatever the case might be).
@ Mark Susselman
I'm not so sure the 1/6 hearings will knock out Trump's reelection chances or hurt the Republican Party enough to justify laying our bets on the hearings to stop Trump.
It may confer a feeling of safety on us- in my view, it's either bad politics or at least insufficient to assure our majority in Congress.
Trump's base will either adamantly deny the findings of the 1/6 hearings or shrug it off.
We have to get things done and look like winners and get our message across.
This is a sideshow, not the main event. It makes us look like losers who have a gripe while we're still in power
If we curbed inflation a bit and got legislation passed, which we didn't due to factionalism on the far left, we'd be better placed.
Put yourself in the mind of the independent or also the Trump voter who can be plucked from the Republicans- will the 1/6 committee really win and woo them?
I think not.
Even though of course the events of 1/6 were a travesty
To Howard:
"... due to factionalism on the far left...."!
WTF, Howard!
The Squad and their mates have been constructive on the legislative front for the entire Biden administration.
Perhaps you can identify a certain "Democratic" Senator from West Virginia who has not been so constructive? And for good measure, maybe a "Democratic" Senator from Arizona who has been just as destructive of what Biden has wanted to accomplish?
Come on, Howard.... I bet you can.
Cheers,
David Z
LFC,
When does someone hit their stride?
Agreed, tennis players rarely hit their stride in their late 80's.
As to academics, I suppose it depends a lot on the discipline.
Someone who has dedicated their life to studying certain thinkers and reflecting deeply on them and is now free from worries about tenure and/or about the next step up or down the academic ladder may well hit their stride in their late 80's in their ability to communicate the message or the importance of those thinkers whom they have spent so much time and mental energy reading and thinking about.
It would be unlikely that they could take up and master an entirely new field, even within the limits of philosophy, at that age.
LFC,
Sorry if my comment about personal pronouns is offensive; when I was told about it, it was in the context of shifting frameworks....from a class analysis to personal identify.
As far as hitting one's stride goes I didn't mean it as in the pinnacle of one's career but more in the sense that RPW, far from at his "sell date," is in top form as a professor.
Howard, Trump's base is a lost cause but the polling and ratings show that the hearings are having a positive effect with other folks. Also the economy doesn't work the way you seem to believe it does.
The last far left member of the Congress was Vito Marcantonio and he died in 1954. Sanders, Warren, and AOC, etc. are basically New Deal Liberals. The obstructing members in the House are the center-right "Problem Solvers." The House has still managed to pass some good bills. As DZ has pointed out the problem is with two Democratic and fifty Republican senators.
The actual far left barely exists in the United States and they are busy playing footsie with the far right and pushing Russian propaganda.
Marc, it's too early to consider a summons for Trump. Even if they can't come up with enough evidence for DOJ to charge obstruction or seditious conspiracy I believe enough damage has been done. There's always Georgia.
If you want to see what a trump victory in 2020 would have meant or a 2024 victory will mean:
https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-2025-radical-plan-second-term
https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/how-viktor-orban-wins/
Jerry,
Your comment about pronouns was not offensive; I was just expressing my own view on the matter.
An informative, and disturbing, analysis published in the Atlantic Magazine of the long-term goals of the far right segment of the Republican Party:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/06/red-and-blue-state-divide-is-growing-michael-podhorzer-newsletter/661377/
Dr. Wolff,
Immanuel Kant and other philosophers you teach have been in the grave for around 200 years or more. They don't have a sell-by-date, and you don't have a sell-by-date. There is a saying of Homer's that Agamemnon would rather have 10 Nestor's over 100 Achilles fighters in his Greek army; he could then bring about the ruin of Troy in no time. Many young people wish they were older, and many older people wish they were younger. This can be a legitimate longing at times. At other times it is just a whimsical yearning with no real foundation.
First, apologies for not offering Prof. Wolff more encouragement and advice—but then when did regulars on this blog ever not avail themselves of the opportunity to give their hobby-horses another whirl around the track?
Still, sometimes these hobby-horses cry out for at least some small response since god knows what damage they do when no response might be taken to signal to the innocent that those hobby-horses might deserve to win the race?
So I must take exception to this assertion: “The actual far left barely exists in the United States and they are busy playing footsie with the far right and pushing Russian propaganda.” [July 23. 2022 at 5:30 PM]
That is, in fact, an assertion I happen to half agree with: the actual left hardly exists in the US, certainly as any kind of organised political force, though I fondly imagine that there are still a sizeable minority who do harbor leftist sentiments, understandings, and hopes.
But what deserves at least a query is the assertion that what remains of the American left, whether in its minute organized forms or in its dispersed forms is, as the blanket condemnation puts it, “busy playing footsie with the far right and pushing Russian propagande.” There are likely some cases of such behavior, since people of any supposed political cast are likely to be found all across the map on particular issues. But to assert it as generally true?
Followers of this blog will be well aware that aaall has an ax to grind. And he repeatedly tries to bury his little hatchet in the heads and minds of those he seemingly viscerally detests, often by making evidence-free assertions (which I’ll acknowledge is par for the course in this Trumpian era) and uttering rather crude insults (also, sadly the norm in this miserable era). Perhaps some day he’ll humor us all with an account of his own political trajectory which has brought him to this very sorry pass.
Anon, "Crude insults." Moi? I don't think so
Frequent contributor Marc S. recently shared a few links from far left sources. I suggest you look them up and read well beyond the referenced articles. I did and found apologetics for folks ranging from Stalin to Trump. I suggest you poke around the populist/national conservative Right before discounting my quite reasonable assertions. Some folks on the left seem to be unable to get beyond too often immoral, stupid, and inevitably counterproductive actions of the US during the cold war/war on terror.
A little help but you can find more if you seek:
https://hir.harvard.edu/the-russified-german-far-right/
https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/putin-wages-hybrid-war-on-germany-and-west-a-1075483.html
BTW, campaigns don't share internal polling with outsiders.
Below is a pic from a remake of animal Farm:
https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/russia_dinner2000.jpg?w=990
Oui, toi. There you go again offering a few points and encouraging everyone to draw a particular generalising curve through them.
aaall,
Politics makes strange bed fellows, they say.
Biden (a mainstream Democrat, which you seem to support) just went and bumped fists with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, widely thought to have ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and soon to be monarch of a misogynistic, anti-gay, anti-trans authoritarian religious regime.
Does that mean that Biden is somehow endorsing Khashoggi? No, no more than Jill Stein is endorsing Putin by having dinner with him. By the way, if Jill Stein were really a Kremlin agent, I doubt that she would pose for a photo besides Putin. Spies generally don't do that.
s.w., Perhaps we have a category error. I don't fault Biden for dealing with MBS anymore then I would have faulted FDR for bailing out the Soviet Union because Hitler. Life is messy and Biden was left to clean up Trump's Afghanistan, NATO, covid, and Middle East screw ups as well as Obama's and Trump's Ukraine screw ups. (In my darker moments I sometimes muse on the Empty Quarter being empty, the Red Sea being chock full of sharks, and we having lots of helicopters.)
In the real world we need to understand the difference between agents, assets, and useful idiots. Folks like Flynn and Stein are some mix of the later two as is Trump. The guy running Manafort was an agent. The NRA brass who let the Russians in are probably useful idiots. I like the photo because it makes me laugh.
aaall,
There's a segment of the "good vibes" left which believes that all wars and conflicts stem from misunderstandings between nations and that if someone of good will can sit down with world leaders and convince them to "give peace a chance", maybe those leaders will "give peace a chance". I'd say that Jill Stein is coming from there and that's why she sat down to break bread with Putin. I'd call her "innocent", you'll call her a "useful idiot" and
let's leave it at that. An asset she isn't.
Here's a hypothesis: That in the fulness of time it will transpire that we have all been agents, assets and/or useful idiots wrt some of our most strongly held commitments. Even you, aaall, may turn out to have been one or more of these wrt your advocacy for Ukraine.
A small warning: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-draft-law-5371-workers-rights-war-russia/
Anon, your observation seems like a prescription for paralysis. Also:
1. I don't believe you understand the differences between the three and the issues raised by the bill seem irrelevant to the issues around Russia's war of agression.
2. I learned a long time ago to never accept an analysis of a proposed law if I haven't read and understood the bill and the background to that bill. Preliminary analysis is often tasked to interns and agendas abound.
3. Ukraine isn't the Lone ranger here. For some reason neoliberalism just won't die. Union busting is actually a profitable business in the United States. Also for a start:
Taft-Hartley
Ronald Reagan
Margaret Thatcher
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte and the Chicago Boys
4. Unless you have evidence that Russia is a workers paradise, perhaps a free and democratic Ukraine that is a part of Europe will be a better place for labor to work out these issues.
s.w., I understand but she isn't local volunteer. She (and Nader) changed the course of world history and spent millions to do it. Hey, run a serious campaign in a few states and the next thing we have is war, a little depression, an attempted coup, and a ten year old rape victim has to flee her state to get an abortion. Cui bono has a place.
Well that’s pretty astounding, aaall. You’re acknowledged lack of acquaintance with the situation justifies your contemptuous dismissal of a report, written in part by a Ukrainian journalist, on matters which have prompted criticisms by the ILO, the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine, a Ukrainian labour lawyer, and European trade union groups? But I suppose you know best.
On the other hand, your evident reluctance to even consider criticisms of some of what seems to be going on in Ukraine does as possibly having some validity does lead me to wonder whether we won’t have to await the fulness of time to be able to judge whether you’re an agent, an asset, or merely a useful idiot.
PS. For what it’s worth, I am making no comparisons explicit or implicit regarding working conditions in Russia. It’s also worth noting that neo-liberalism is dominant within the EU Ukraine is so eager to join.
I'd avoid Austin.
Anon, help me out. " Validity" to what end? Is it your point that unless the Ukrainian labor code meets your standards, the various nations supplying military assistance should bail and let the Russian Federation deal and then move on to Moldova? Ukraine wants to be part of Europe. European unions are weighing in. I'm content to let Ukrainians do Ukrainian journalism and politics while also helping them with their Russian problem. Your mileage seems to vary.
BTW, have you ever actually read and analyzed legislation as opposed to just reading and internalizing articles that are in line with your priors?
No, aaall, I'm not at all trying to make the point that unless Ukrainian labor codes meet my standards nations should bail out on miltary assistance. As to whether or not Russia would move on Moldova, that's a separate, debateable issue and has nothing to do with the point I was trying to make. (You do keep piling on the non sequiturs, which makes it very difficult to converse with you.) As to my point, I was imply trying to suggest that there are reasons why one should be careful about idealizing Ukraine. And I think that's a point worth making since beginning with the Russian invasion there has by my observation been a tendency to idealize it on the part of a great many people. But perhaps you disagree with that too? Anyway, idealization of any country, or political party, or person (one's own children and grandchildren aside, though even there it can become problematical) is something to be avoided just as much as demonization is to be avoided, since both can lead to skewed judgements. We should attend to both the negatives and the positives.
As to "validity," I actually said "as possibly having some validity." A considerate reader would have taken my point that it does no harm and perhaps some good to attend to what one's political opponents are arguing. See/hear/speak no evil doesn't conduce to learning or understanding.
Wrt your last question, the answer is yes. But I feel moved to add that one should likely take care to distinguish the historical and geographic origins of the legislation one is trying to understand. An American experience may provide little insight into legislative practices elsewhere and/or elsewhen. That's why I noted the Ukrainian and European evaluations of the proposed Ukrainian legislation.
Anonymous,
That's a good point about how Ukraine has been idealized.
Before the canonization process began, it was known as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe and with a very low rating on democracy indexes.
"...was known as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe and with a very low rating on democracy indexes. "
That's probably why the Orange and Maidan Uprisings happened. The Ukrainian people do seem to have aspirations. Anyway, besides the point. Ukraine isn't a oppressive, nuclear armed, personalist dictatorship in thrall to yet another off the wall ideology with generous dollops of some screwy theology and racism and who can't negotiate in good faith (see the recent strike on port facilities in Odessa the day after an agreement to ship grain).
With respect, the whole "idealizing Ukraine" meme is as much a red herring as the "Nazi" BS and Moldova is neither separate or debatable given recent Russian statements and the current presence of Russian troops in Transnistria.
I don't idealize much of anything and certainly not politicians. However, back in February Zelenskyy could have bailed and the Ukrainian military could have fallen apart. That didn't happen. Instead they both stood up and an opportunity presented itself. The NATO nations properly seized it. It's to everyone's advantage that the Russian military be maximally degraded and the aggression defeated. I would point out that Ukraine should have gotten HIMARS and MLRS systems well before they were provided. No idealism needed here.
Off point but if one looks at a map, Belarus is sort of like a dagger pointing at Poland. Shortening the line would look better. Maybe one day!
Here's the Freedom House (hardly a leftie thinktank) rating on Ukraine for 2021 (before Ukraine became "in"). It scores "partially free".
https://freedomhouse.org/country/ukraine/freedom-world/2021
Thanks, but not sure of the point. If one checks out separate categories there is considerable variation (e.g. elections high, rule of law low). I would point out that the peoples republics that Russia has so kindly liberated from those fearsome Nazis rank in the single digits while Ukraine is at 61 which puts it in Hungary, Mexico, India territory. I believe most Ukrainians acknowledge that there is lots of room for improvement. Chile looks good while Mongolia is a point higher then the US.
I found these items interesting: https://freedomhouse.org/ukraine
"Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not only an attack on a peaceful country that is striving to build its democracy. It is also an attack on democracy itself—on every person’s fundamental human rights and political and civil liberties. With your help, Freedom House will continue to identify threats to freedom, spur action to counter those threats, and support activists working to defend and expand freedom not only in Ukraine, but around the world. "
"Democratic societies everywhere must support the Ukrainian people in their struggle for peace and freedom."
"The invasion of Ukraine is an attack on democracy: Vladimir Putin cannot tolerate Ukrainians’ aspirations to build a democracy on Russia’s borders and has launched a war of aggression to prevent this from happening."
"There is no legitimate justification for this war: Vladimir Putin is lying to the Russian people and the world at-large – Ukraine poses no threat to the Russian Federation. Russia's actions represent a textbook example of what authoritarian governments are capable of doing, and underscore the importance of defending democratic freedoms around the globe."
Well, OK.
A gentleman from the Hoover Institute has just published a piece in the Bulletin of
Atomic Scientists on the invasion of and current situation in Ukraine. Of particular interest are his proposed solutions, separate for Crimea, the Donbas, and Ukraine's possible future relationship with Europe (on this he offers Austria as a model). He also notes that there is a further problem of the conflict between the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches over the ownership of church property in Ukraine:https://thebulletin.org/2022/07/ending-the-war-in-ukraine-practical-if-painful-possibilities/?fbclid=IwAR0vByP9aKBbduVPFzcecXHF4y8XFS9t7VhTnV-_Y5deLidjeVzITmuFxFw#.Yt7rK6Tbksw.facebook
'And the third way requires that students know what the miracle of transubstantiation in the Catholic mass is.'
So to speak. You mean, that this is a Scholastic term that attempts to explain something, a technical theological term. One-third of U.S. Catholics believe in it. It has something to do with forgiving all student debt. A second historical view is that of Martin Luther. Luther very clearly distinguished his view from transubstantiation. An analogy that is often used to explain this is like a sponge and water. Wherever a sponge is that's soaked with water, there is the water. And wherever the water is, it's there contained by the sponge. For John Calvin, there are symbols that are very powerful.
'This is a philosophy class with one of the world's foremost experts on Kant and Marx.'
This is a philosophy class with one of a bunch of the world's foremost experts on Kant and Marx. Well, not a bunch. Like, two. Which is a lot for me.
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