Oh, I get pretty good reviews, and I have -- and enjoy -- lots of students like you: bright, committed, well-read, not necessarily very adept yet at meta-analysis or at moving far enough back from their own arguments to assess the structure of argumentation. I fault you merely for rendering as simple and univocal what was complex and ambivalent. You would persuade us that slavery was a bad thing. Sold. You would persuade us that no black person in North America between about 1600 and 1865 experienced satisfaction let alone happiness, or affection for particular white people. Horse-hockey. Then you would tar anybody who is capable of complex thought (in its literal sense) of thought-crime. And that's the usual idealogue's position. It confers on its holders a sense of moral superioirty, and when it takes power, it gets damn dangerous -- my resentment of what's called "political correctness" has not to do with their political positions, most of which I share, but at their essentially fascist disposition to extinguish opposition. It's dramatic and it's simple; it is useful for group-formation because of its emotional effects. Nothing finer than to be part of the little grroup behind the barricades who knows how things really are. There's a time and place, perhaps, to squelch inquiring thought for the sake of a common objective, but damned if I'll assign education generally to that category.

Heroism is always right, because it feels and never reasons.

Adam

Adam