Interestingly enough, it took my boss half an hour to get in and out of the drive-through at Chick-Fil-A yesterday, and locations in northern Virginia are just getting slammed today.

The point I'm making is more of a historiographical one and less an ethical one. Certainly you can appeal to historical precedent in determining a correct stand, otherwise the common law legal system would cease to function. The idea at issue in using the term "right side of history" is that very often it really means whoever was "right" in the view of an observer looking from centuries ahead with an inadequate sense of context.  A French writer in the 1690s might very well have thought absolute monarchy to be the pinnacle of human political development, a position in which he would have thought himself justified based on France's place in the world. A similar Frenchman in the 1790s could have repudiated those values and instead extolled the virtues of the revolutionary republic. This doesn't mean that the correct stand on an issue is inherently relative. It just means it's hard to be on the "right side" without knowing what will unfold.

Perhaps I have not chosen the best example here. Of course I am not saying history has nothing to teach us. Otherwise, there would be no point in paying it any attention at all. The point is that based on present conditions, it is a bad idea to proclaim oneself on "the right side of history." Certainly we can look back at Adams and Jefferson in 1800 and make judgments based on what ramifications their decisions had for the nation, but it would have been hasty at that time to make a judgment as to a "right side." It's one thing to analyze the past; it is quite another to proclaim yourself on a hypothetical right side at a particular moment with little or no foresight.

"Progress" is yet another one of those historiographical buzzwords that gets tossed around and yet has little actual meaning relative to historical reality.

I took piano lessons for about ten years, viola for maybe four or five, and organ for two. All I can say- and I suspect this is the case for anyone who teaches anything- is that any teacher giving private lessons has to make sure that they practice, and needs to push the students. I learned the most from music teachers who knew how to get good work out of me.

We have Jim Lehrer this year. Hardly optimal, but you can do a lot worse. I know my parents got Art Buchwald, and the year after them got William F. Buckley, Jr.

Just browsing through the research presented at W&M's undergraduate honors research colloquium, I don't think I see anything at quite this level of oddity. I'm suddenly feeling very good about my honors thesis. Quite good indeed.

How about Sociology 466: Hoodies, Memory Politics and Urban Violence in Postmodern Intersectional Contexts?

That Williams bit is good. I think I'll start posting it too.

Duly noted. The original quotation makes a lot more sense in the context of that particular article. Thanks for pointing this out to me.

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I'm inclined to agree with you insofar as the media has no real incentive to moderate an honest debate.  Debates don't seem to be designed to do anything beyond generate new headlines for the networks to work with, and to get the candidates fighting each other.

Dr. Ablow is one of those people who really just makes me scratch my head at times.  This is one of those times.

Fair enough. North Korea probably would be better off without US trade barriers, but one would have to consider how open a regime like North Korea would be to that kind of US influence. The real point is that the left can't imagine socialism failing without the meddling of the insidious bourgeoisie. Let us suppose furthermore that they are right and North Korea is our fault; I don't see American leftists championing free trade with the developing world, or at least not gleefully.

There's an exemption in the full text of the ordinance exempting both nuclear medicine and "basic research."

As it occurs to me, the maximum penalty for owning a nuke in Chicago is significantly lighter than Virginia's maximum penalty for battery.