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Liberal Learning: Got It! The Wipers Are Working!

February 28, 2013 By 1 Comment
Christopher B. Nelson liberal learning

Christopher B. Nelson

by Christopher B. Nelson 

I have been reminiscing lately, probably a sign of my age, but I came to recall an episode in my earlier life before I returned to St. John’s College more than 20 years ago, when my second son announced: “Dad, I’m willing to talk with you about my college choices, but I’m not going to go to that school where my brother is (St. John’s College), and I don’t want a liberal education, whatever that is.”

This son happened to have an interest in automobiles, his uncle happened to be an automobile mechanic, and we happened to have an old junker in the driveway, a 1960s something Volkswagen bug. Almost nothing worked in the car; it wouldn’t go, and my wife and her brother were working to get the car to perform its principle purpose – going. My brother-in-law saw an opportunity to engage my uninterested son when he discovered that the windshield wipers weren’t working and asked my son to give him a hand. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Christopher B. Nelson, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, Socrates, St. John's College February 28, 2013

Is President Obama Shaping a New Majority?

February 28, 2013 By Leave a Comment
obama

Pat Buchanan

by Patrick J. Buchanan

In the 20th century, only two presidents shaped new governing coalitions that outlasted them. They were the only two men to appear on five national tickets.

The first was FDR, who rang down the curtain in 1932 on the seven decades of Republican hegemony since Abraham Lincoln that had seen only two Democrats in the White House. And Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson had made it only because of divisions inside the GOP.

Franklin Roosevelt would win four terms, and his party would win the presidency in seven of nine elections between 1932 and 1968. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Barack Obama, Pat Buchanan, Politics, War February 28, 2013

Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey & Iliad

February 28, 2013 By 1 Comment

Odyssey Iliadby Winston Elliott III

Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad

Featured Book: Reading Homer’s poems is one of the purest, most inexhaustible pleasures life has to offer–a secret somewhat too well kept in our time. The aim of this book is to tell anyone who might care–first-time, second-time, or third-time readers or people who have not laid eyes on the epics–some of the causes and details of that delight.

Besides telling some of the delightful discoveries any well-disposed reader can make in the epics, I would like, really incidentally, to demonstrate a way of reading the epics that will, I think, make more such things reveal themselves. “A way of reading” is not quite the same as what critics call “a reading,” that is, a total interpretative hypothesis, but rather the aforementioned mood of trusting expectation, a receptivity to the poet’s signals, and a reliance on all our own life and learning. (from Eva Brann’s introduction) [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Eva Brann, Homer, Iliad, Odyssey, TIC Featured Book February 28, 2013