Social bookmarking is a way for social networks to collectively save, rate, and promote online content. At Sympoze users can submit links to philosophy content that they enjoy - from philosophy blog posts, links to unpublished papers, or links to published journal articles they enjoy or think other philosophers will enjoy.
Anyone can read the site, but active participation (submission and rating of content) is limited to graduate students and Ph.D.'s in philosophy, so if you fit either of those two profiles, think about joining. The site is still in construction-and-testing phase, but is already fairly interesting. One of the things that can be done on the site, and which hasn't had much test-driving yet, is group-building. If anyone joins and wants to form a History of Philosophy group, let me know. (We'll have to see if this ends up being suitable as a general philosophy site; there's always the danger of its becoming an overwhelmingly analytic site, devoted to whatever analytic-minded graduate students happen to be studying at the moment. But the way Andrew has set it up gives it room to grow into something more than that; so cross your fingers.)
* Ross Douthat discusses Chesterton and anti-Semitism (ht). The tricky thing with the common accusation that Chesterton was an anti-Semite is that he was pretty clearly also an anti-anti-Semite, and, as Douthat notes, attacked political anti-Semitism in particularly rather strongly; he was also a pro-Zionist. The culprit that occasionally leads to the anti-Semite charge is that Chesterton has a tendency to talk about groups of people by a sort of stereotype. The stereotypes are not taken uncritically from the culture around him, and are in some cases strikingly original (and also in some cases strikingly favorable to the people involved), but they are still there, and that gets him into trouble on subjects like women's suffrage or the Jewish people. Chesterton's discussions of the Jews are not wholly justifiable, and certain features can legitimately be considered anti-Semitic in some sense; but it's important, if we are to take problems of anti-Semitism seriously, that we not succomb to a stereotype of anti-Semitism, as if it could only take one form, or as if all forms were simply the same thing as Nazi Jew-hating. Anti-Semitism, like racism, sexism, etc., is often subtle, and can easily spring up even in the best of us if vigilance is not taken; sometimes it is clearly culpable, and sometimes it is more a matter of material complicity than culpability; sometimes it is global and sometimes it is sharply limited; sometimes it is rooted in malice and sometimes just in a relatively innocent ignorance; sometimes it is deliberately cultivated, sometimes it arises through negligence, and sometimes someone is just a little too slow to think through the matter, so that the weed lasts longer than it should; sometimes the problem is that the means of vigilance were neglected, and sometimes that they didn't at the time exist; and so forth. There are many distinctions that have to be made if anti-Semitism is to be treated properly, because most such distinct types have to be handled differently if rememdy is to be found.
* The Atheist Game. (ht) A little bit sarcastic, but it's at least worth a chuckle.
* Fr. Dwight Longenecker interviews Anne Rice.
* John Wilkins questions whether Herbert Spencer was really a Social Darwinist.
* Chad Orzel is collecting titles of science fiction stories suitable for teaching ethics.
* The naivete of this opinion piece on religion by Minette Marrin (ht) astounds me:
So-called religious community leaders, or umbrella groups of religious bodies, must of course be free to associate as they like in private, in a free country, but publicly they must be ignored. Publicly they must not teach or promote illegal prejudices. Forced into the private sphere, denied the oxygen of publicity, power and influence, highly politicised religious groups will wither on the vine. Perhaps, in that wonderful phrase of Yeats, they might even wither into truth.
Setting aside the question of how such an approach can even be made consistent with liberal democracy, this seems to me not a recipe for eliminating religious extremism, but for intensifying it. To deny "publicity, power and influence" to religious groups is effectively to deny them to some people in matters that they regard as most important; what would wither on the vine are the moderate religious groups that perform the social function of pulling people who would otherwise be extremist into the mainstream; and marginalizing the rest in matters they consider important puts pressure on them to politicize further and engage in even more extreme tactics.
