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Frederick Smith

Wheaton President Ryken's Reply To Alumni Protesting Lawsuit Against HHS Over ACA Contr... - 0 views

Dr. Philip Ryken, President, Wheaton College alumni@wheaton.edu via email.imodules.com Reply-to: alumni@wheaton.edu Date: Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 10:00 PM Subject: Responding to your feedback regar...

abortion conflict contraceptives Ella Plan B Wheaton College evangelicals and public square

started by Frederick Smith on 29 Jul 12 no follow-up yet
Frederick Smith

The Case for Contamination, by Kwame Anthony Appiah - 1/1/2006 - 0 views

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    '"Contamination" ... is an evocative term. When people speak for an ideal of cultural purity, sustaining the authentic culture of the Asante or the American family farm, I find myself drawn to contamination as the name for a counterideal. [The Roman playwright] Terence [whose plays acquired that label to describe his conflation of Greek plays into a single Roman comedy] had a notably firm grasp on the range of human variety: "So many men, so many opinions" was a line of his. And it's in his comedy "The Self-Tormentor" that you'll find what may be the golden rule of cosmopolitanism - Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto; "I am human: nothing human is alien to me." The context is illuminating. A busybody farmer named Chremes is told by his neighbor to mind his own affairs; the homo sum credo is Chremes's breezy rejoinder. It isn't meant to be an ordinance from on high; it's just the case for gossip. Then again, gossip - the fascination people have for the small doings of other people - has been a powerful force for conversation among cultures. 'The ideal of contamination has few exponents more eloquent than Salman Rushdie, who has insisted that the novel that occasioned his fatwa "celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelisation and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Mélange, hotch-potch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world." No doubt there can be an easy and spurious utopianism of "mixture," as there is of "purity" or "authenticity." And yet the larger human truth is on the side of contamination - that endless process of imitation and revision. 'A tenable global ethics has to temper a respect for difference with a respect for the freedom of actual human beings to make their own choices. That's why cosmopolitans don't insist that everyone become cosmopolitan. They know they don't hav
Frederick Smith

The Emerging "Coffee Party" Movement & coincidental convergence - 1 views

Americans' Break for Coffee: "Let's wake up, smell the coffee, and converse civilly about America's ABCs" (Incomplete write-up-2/14/10) A. Our Government is Paralyzed Americans Break for Coff...

politics Coffee-Party government Tea Party movement

started by Frederick Smith on 03 Mar 10 no follow-up yet
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