Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Only 14 shopping days until Xmas
Speaking of December, fearless writers, and anniversaries, the 28th of this month marks 300’th death anniversary of Pierre Bayle, an early exemplar of the “unquiet intellectual”. He wrote the “Arsenal of the Enlightenment”, ‘Dictionnaire historique et critique’, inspiration to the likes of Hume, Rousseau, and Voltaire.
Sadly, 3 centuries after his death it seems many of the topics he wrote upon--heretical ideas like the right to dissent and criticize prevalaing pieties--need to be reiterated in an era when statements like this pass with little comment or even praise:
“Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.”
Posted by sk on from 12/10 at 11:02 AMI.F. Stone bats cleanup for the Journalism All-stars. His “Hidden History of the Korean War” is a rarely-discussed gem. The “Nonconformist History of Our Times,” arranged in chronological pieces, is also worth a read. “The War Years, 1939-1945” has an essay called “The Arrival of the Dollar A Year Men,” about the upper class types who arranged and controlled war production. Makes one think twice about FDR and The Good War (sic).
Yesterday’s One Fact entry: thanks for the replies. Like the Voigt-Kampff test, there are no correct responses (only alcoholic killer cops waiting for the call).
Captcha sez “love.” Like a Bonobo chimp, agreed.
Posted by Zenprole on from Urth 12/10 at 12:17 PMHello Expendables. It’s once again abnormally warm for December.
SK: I must admit that I’ve never heard of Pierre Bayle.
Zen: I’m with you, re: Izzy.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/10 at 02:03 PMI hadn’t heard of him either, until I read this book--one of the best I came across this year--by George Mosse, a cultural historian (who talks about Bayle in another context in the first 28 minutes of this talk from this lecture series).
As has been said elsewhere, Bayle’s “work seems too important to be left exclusively to professional scholars”...
Posted by sk on from 12/10 at 03:38 PMI’m not sure how soon I can do so, but I’ll definitely check out Bayle. Thanks, SK.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/10 at 03:52 PMAnother war criminal dies before facing justice:
http://tinyurl.com/y75sfwPosted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/10 at 05:22 PMAnd a Happy Birthday to your Dad from me as well, Mickey!
As always: great quotes, great graphics - and the articles are not to be sneezed at either. The perfect mixture every day, Cool Observer.
‘Another war criminal dies before facing justice’ - my thoughts exactly, Mickey.
And hi, sk and zenprole from a much cooler Daylesford: a mere 68F today after quite oppressive 104 yesterday. The bushfires keep raging unfortunately, but at quite some distance from Daylesford.
Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 12/10 at 05:54 PMHello Helga. Is it me or are the weather swings in your town becoming rather drastic?
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/10 at 05:56 PMre: war criminal dies: when Nixon exited, I said to myself “Instead of a trial, we could just throw him in a dumpster.” Hunter Thompson’s eulogy of Nixon was a biscuit of compensation. At the very least, let’s hope someone in Chile writes something similar.
http://tinyurl.com/5kjz5
[The original eulogy ended with “broke the heart of the American Dream” in RS and “Better Than Sex.” I don’t know where those other bits at the end came from. - DP]Aye, Helga, the weather down under is behaving like MS Windows.
Guten Abend, Expendables.
Posted by Zenprole on from Urth 12/10 at 07:20 PMThanks for the HST link, Zen. All this talk about aging war criminals reminds me of:
http://tinyurl.com/y6nup3Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/10 at 07:26 PM“Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile represented one of the most difficult periods in that nation’s history,” said a White House spokesman.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/10 at 08:00 PMMickey, FYI, this has a good selection from Bayle’s vast writings. Just to make his story more relevant, it looks like amazon, the biggest seller of books in the world, has taken up censorship in the last couple of days.
Posted by sk on from 12/11 at 01:34 AMThanks again, SK.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/11 at 05:20 AM
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