What a lot of people like to dress up a love of bullying and violence and cruelty as some kind of quest for social justice – the FARC, Islamists, ZANU-PF – and the Animal Liberation Front. Good old Jerry Vlasak is still at it, only more so.

One scrawled “killer” in chalk on the scientist’s doorstep, while another hurled insults through a bullhorn and announced, “Your neighbor kills animals!” Someone shattered a window. Borrowing the kind of tactics used by anti-abortion demonstrators, animal rights activists are increasingly taking their rage straight to scientists’ front doors. Over the past couple of years, more and more researchers who experiment on animals have been harassed and terrorized in their own homes, with

And one more thing. She says something quite rude about Daniel Dennett, and what she says is not accurate. Pp. 9-10.

It is certainly supremely annoying when intellectuals talk down to religious people, speaking as if all smart people are atheists. Philosopher Daniel Dennett is particularly guilty of this. In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, he coined the term ‘brights’ for nonbelievers, suggesting very clearly that the right name for believers was ‘dummies.’

He did not coin the term, as he clearly states in the op-ed piece, right at the top of the second paragraph.

The term ”bright” is a recent coinage by two brights in Sacramento, Calif., who thought our social group — which

As you read further in Nussbaum’s Liberty of Conscience (or at least, as I do), it gets worse. It gets unendurable in places. Parts of it (yes like the curate’s egg) are good, and readable without too much irritation, but there are patches where it becomes simply maddening. I started counting words. On page 52 she uses the word ‘precious’ four times, and both ‘respect’ and ‘dignity’ more than that, along with ‘deep’ or ‘profound’. All five occur much too often, again, on 53-4. Look…even apart from the philosophical aspect, that’s just not a good way to write. If I’d been her editor I would have called her on it very early in the book. It’s not a good idea … Read the rest

In comments on ‘Reading Nussbaum’ Tea mentioned that Nussbaum ‘is not only delusional about religious believers (and dogmatic about respecting religious beliefs), she is also a Freudian.’ True. I’d remembered the Freudian claims in Hiding From Humanity, but when I found that chapter again I realized I’d forgotten that they’re also heavily present in Upheavals of Thought. She introduces the subject in a very interesting way in the latter book (p. 181):

It has become fashionable in the United States to sneer at psychoanalysis. In part this dismissive attitude results from the fact that Americans are generally impatient with complexity and sadness, and tend to want a quick chemical fix for deep human problems. People who have that