Truth [is] What Is Better For Us

[walt] Whitman And [humanist Educator John] Dewey Tried To Substitute Hope For Knowledge. They Wanted To Put Shared Utopian Dreams - Dreams Of An Ideally Decent And Civilized Society - In The Place Of Knowledge Of God's Will, Moral Law, The Laws Of History, Or The Facts Of Science.... As Long As We Have A Functioning Political Left, We Still Have A Chance To Achieve Our Country, To Make It The Country Of Whitman's And Dewey's Dreams.

The World Does Not Speak. Only We Do. The World Can, Once We Have Programmed Ourselves With A Language, Cause Us To Hold Beliefs. But It Cannot Propose A Language For Us To Speak. Only Other Human Beings Can Do That.

There Are Credentials For Admission To Our Democratic Society [...]. You Have To Be Educated In Order To Be A Participant In Our Conversation So We Are Going To Go Right On Trying To Discredit You In The Eyes Of Your Children, Trying To Strip Your Fundamentalist Religious Community Of Dignity, Trying To Make Your Views Seem Silly Rather Than Discussable. We Are Not So Inclusivist As To Tolerate Intolerance Such As Yours.

The Usual Picture Of Socrates Is Of An Ugly Little Plebeian Who Inspired A Handsome Young Nobleman To Write Long Dialogues On Large Topics.

I Illustrate With A Quotation From The Atheist Philosopher Richard Rorty, Who Died Recently And Is, I Suspect, Now Having A Lengthy Conversation With His Maker. Rorty Argued That Secular Professors Ought “to Arrange Things So That Students Who Enter As Bigoted, Homophobic Religious Fundamentalists Will Leave College With Views More Like Our Own.