* Chris Bray has a good post on David Hackworth (cross-posted here) and others like him, and the failure of civilian hawks to take them seriously. Hackworth, who had received many distinguished awards for military service, because of his strongly pro-military views and advocacy of military reform, was occasionally sharply critical both of civilian hawks and Pentagon 'princes'. He died recently. His organization, Soldiers for the Truth, is a fairly good resource for acquainting oneself with straight talk by veterans and soldiers in the field about the U.S. military, U.S. foreign policy, and the like. I know much less about Bacevich, but the story sounds too familiar. There are, in fact, good pro-soldier reasons for being very wary of much of American military policy; and it is unfortunate that people are sometimes unwilling to recognize that. It's one of the sordid sides of partisan politics that I keep mentioning. Of course, Hackworth isn't above criticism; this seems about right, for instance, just judging on what little I know of the matter. But a serious interest in the health and reasonable use of the U.S. military -- an interest that should be shared in some degree by all American citizens, whatever their political assumptions -- requires at least taking the trouble to take people like Hackworth, and their call for reforms, seriously.
* Christian Humanism: The Knowledge of God and of Ourselves at "Internet Monk"
* Thick Epistemology at "Certain Doubts"
* Four Kinds of Ontological Argument at "The Maverick Philosopher"
* After Caleb's post questioning the explanatory power Lakoff's Strict Father / Nuturant Parent catories have and my post puzzling over Lakoff's claims about American religion, Chris mentioned Lakoff's claims about intonation at "Mixing Memory" in a personal reflection about when and why he came to have difficulty taking Lakoff's conceptual metaphor accounts seriously. And Coturnix (Bora Zivkovic) responds to all three at "Science and Politics".
I'll be giving a paper at the CPA Sunday, and I recently decided I didn't like how it was put together, so I am in the middle of completely reworking it. As you can imagine that means I'm very busy at the moment....
