politics

Obama’s 2009 Address to Joint Session of Congress

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive Comments Off on Obama’s 2009 Address to Joint Session of Congress

Madame Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and the First Lady of the United States: I’ve come here tonight not only to address the distinguished men and women in this great chamber, but to speak frankly and directly to the men and women who sent us here. I know that for many Americans watching…

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Heidegger, We Hardly Knew Ya…

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 3 Comments

The brainy parts of the internet are all a-buzz recently about philosopher Martin Heidegger and his student Hannah Arendt, largely as a result of the publication of a series of provoctaive reviews of Emmanuel Faye’s provocatively titled book Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy. The most provocative of those reviews was an essay published…

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#Hashtags

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Ethics, Philosophy, Politics, Public Philosophy, Technology and Human Values Comments Off on #Hashtags
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President Obama’s Health Care Speech (9/9/09)

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Obama 1 Comment

FULL TEXT OF PRESIDENT OBAMA’S ADDRESS: Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, and the American people: When I spoke here last winter, this nation was facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We were losing an average of 700,000 jobs per month. Credit was frozen. And our financial system was on…

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Regionalism

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Memphis, Politics Comments Off on Regionalism

In light of the (somewhat reductionist, mostly exaggerated) stereotypes of different United States’ regions evidenced in the comments section of my post a few days ago, I thought I might remark briefly on this rather unfortunate phenomenon. (Please click on the image to the right to see what I mean.) “Regionalism” expresses itself both positively…

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What’s Wrong With the World Today?

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Teaching 3 Comments

Last night, I participated in a panel discussion of global issues entitled “What’s Wrong with the World Today?” as a part of Rhodes College’s “Think Globally, Act Locally” week. My co-panelists were two colleagues of mine, one from Economics and one from International Studies. It was a lively and productive discussion, I think, and I…

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Hello, Dalai

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Memphis, Politics 5 Comments

One thing you CANNOT say about Memphis is that it doesn’t have a sense of humor about politics. Especially mayoral politics. Remember, this is a town that has not one, but TWO, mayors (one for the city and another for the county). We also had the same Memphis City Mayor, Willie Herenton, for five consecutive…

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The Uncanny Valley

June 9, 2024 Dr. J Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Uncanny Valley, Weak Humanism 3 Comments

[Update: This post is the first in an ongoing series about the Uncanny Valley.  Click here to read them all.] A couple of weeks ago when I was teaching Descartes’ Meditations, one of my students made reference to something called the “uncanny valley,” which I had never heard of before but which sounded really fascinating….

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The Uncanny Valley 2: Racial Appearances

June 9, 2024 Dr. J Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Uncanny Valley, Weak Humanism 5 Comments

[This is a continutation of my previous post on the uncanny valley. If you don’t know what the uncanny valley is, you may want to go back and read the previous post first.] In 1931, at the beginning of the dénouement of the Harlem Renaissance, conservative (some would say “reactionary”) African-American author George Schuyler penned…

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“Heart of Stone” Music Video

June 9, 2024 Dr. J Music, Weak Humanism 2 Comments

You may remember my mentioning a couple of months ago on this blog (“Video Killed the Philosophy Professor“) that I had my first experience shooting a music video for one of my original songs. Well, here’s the final product. Directed by Dana Gabrion and Chris Morgan. Photography by Chris Morgan. Starring: Max Maloney, Marlinee Iverson,…

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