[Membroj] Mort-al Foot in Mouth

[Ralph Dumain]

You quite obviously know nothing of history, for example of the 
period in which Adler was active.  The Catholic Church's historic 
crimes against the Jews (not to mention others) are well-known, so 
deal with it.  Secondly, it's one thing to be born into something and 
make the best of it, but conversion is entirely another matter.  A 
Jew converting to Catholicism, that is, to defect to his persecutors, 
is a turn to authoritarianism and the right.  A conversion to a more 
conservative and authoritarian denomination of the same religion 
might be comparable.  For example, a secular Jew turning 
orthodox.  Or a liberal Catholic joining the fascist Opus Dei.  That 
Esperanto is the creation of a member of a persecuted people is no 
accident, and if you can't be honest about history, you need to 
refrain from engaging in major discourse.

On another note, there have been several critiques of the Great Books 
program.  I can't put my finger on more than one. I recall only the 
first I ever read:

Macdonald, Dwight. "The Book-of-the-Millennium Club," in Against the 
American Grain: Essays on the Effects of Mass Culture (New York: 
Vintage Books, 1965), pp. 243-261.

There is a body of literature on intellectual popularization in the 
first half of the 20th century. I don't recall whether this book 
addresses the Great Books program, but here's an important reference:

Rubin, Joan Shelley. The Making of Middlebrow Culture. Chapel Hill: 
University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

I do not recall whether this noted author addresses the Great Books at all:

Cotkin, George. "Middle-Ground Pragmatists: The Popularization of 
Philosophy in American Culture," Journal of the History of Ideas, 
vol. 55, no. 2, April 1994, 283-302.


At 10:38 PM 10/29/2008, Will Cubbedge wrote:
>Your gutter language and your association of my Catholic fath with 
>anti-semitism on a public Esperanto email list does not help the 
>language any more than Adler's dumb use of the word Esperanto.
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