Michael Weinman, Author at Public Seminar

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Mayoral Statements on Confederate Memorials

Misrepresentation and Misrecognition, yet again (Part Two)

June 12, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

In this second part of further reflections on misrepresentation and misrecognition building on posts from earlier this year, I explore this rhetorical practice with reference to the current debate concerning the removal of statues of and to “Confederate heroes.” These debates have centered on the removal of four statues in ...

Mayoral Statements on Confederate Memorials

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Presidential Visits to Yad Vashem

Misrepresentation and Misrecognition, yet again (Part One)

June 8, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

You will by now have seen one report or another contrasting the responses of Presidents Obama (who visited as a senator and presidential candidate) and Trump to Yad Vashem, the Israeli national museum and memorial dedicated to the victims of the Nazi Genocide, the survivors of that crime, and the ...

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Ordnance as Ordinance

The MOAB bomb and the Biblical Roots of Our Endless War

May 5, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

In this light, both the decision to name this weapon MOAB and the decision to deploy it in Afghanistan is tightly linked with what Judith Butler called a “new military convention” begun by Colin Powell when he described the deployment of “smart bombs” during the first Iraq War as “the ...

Education

White Supremacy, Elitism, and the Future of Liberal Education

A response to Tim Lacy’s ‘Great Books Socialism’

April 12, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

In his extended essay, “Great Books Socialism?,” recently published on Public Seminar, Tim Lacy makes a compelling case for adapting the practice -- suggested by Molly Worthen in an Op-ed for the New York Times -- of deploying the great books as ideological tools established by conservative foundations and institutes ...

White Supremacy, Elitism, and the Future of Liberal Education

Democracy

Aristotelian Reflections on President Trump’s Unauthorized Missile Strikes in Syria

The opposite of cowardice is rashness, and courage the mean between

April 8, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

Earlier in the same work, while concluding his general discussion of virtue and vice, Aristotle refers to the famous story of Odysseus facing the original “rock and a hard place” dilemma. Odysseus knows that he has no choice but to pass through the middle of the whirlpool and a ferocious ...

Aristotelian Reflections on President Trump’s Unauthorized Missile Strikes in Syria

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Misrepresentation and Misrecognition

Steve King’s American Exceptionalism and its Ties to the “Slaves were Immigrants, too” Thesis

March 30, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

I don’t want to spend much time on King’s comments themselves, but let’s note here the way that “American civilization” is equated with “Western civilization”. Let’s also note that other civilizations are inferior to this civilization, precisely because other civilizations “produce very little freedom,” while “our” superior civilization produces more. ...

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(Not) Coming to Terms with the Past

Race, Injustice and Social Policy in “Postracial” America

March 15, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

A week later, on March 6th, Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), waded into similarly troubled waters when he claimed -- in an address to HUD employees -- “That’s what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in ...

Uncategorized

Tyrant, Demagogue, or Fascist

Which archetype fits President Trump?

February 19, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

In order to see which archetype most closely fits the public persona of candidate and now President Trump, it is helpful to look at historical figures with whom these types are traditionally associated. In an analysis of Trump the candidate published by the Washington Post last February in advance of ...

Education

Democracy and Tyranny in the City and the Soul

A reply to Andrew Sullivan on Trump and Plato’s Republic

January 28, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

Sullivan does not sufficiently stress a key component of the analysis offered by Plato: that the nature of the regime that rules the city relates to the nature of the “soul” inside each individual citizen. When we bring that component back in, I think, we can see why Trump is ...

Uncategorized

Donald Trump: It’s Not Your Thing!

A dispatch from the Women’s March on Washington, January 21, 2017

January 23, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

At long last, we started moving. And from the very first moment that people got the message that, yes, because of how immensely larger than expected the crowd was, we were in fact being told to walk north along 7th, and not to turn west along Independence as had been ...

Education

“Great Books Camp” as Political Education

A Reply to Molly Worthen

December 23, 2016 • by Michael Weinman

In “Can I Go to Great Books Camp?” which recently appeared in the New York Times, Molly Worthen provides an historical account of the development of the “Great Books” program and related curricula inside American universities. It is a report about the present deployment of such “canonical” works in various ...

“Great Books Camp” as Political Education

Feature

Moral and Political Competence, Redux

The View from the Rubble

November 28, 2016 • by Michael Weinman

Last spring, when the Democratic primary was still somewhat in doubt, and people worried about the “bruising” primary season damaging the likely standard bearer in the general election, I suggested that the center/center-left/left coalition needed to hear out the debate between Sanders and Clinton. I argued that this was sound ...