Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

No, that’s not what this wonderful post by Connie du Toit says. Nor is the title even my characterization of what Connie says. It’s my satirical reaction to it by way of deliberately grotesque oversimplification. But why should liberals feel out of place at a gun range? And why should conservatives feel out of place…

The Universal Life Church has been around for 47 years. Founded by the late Kirby Hensley (a man I met many years ago), the church takes an extremely broad, extremely liberal view of man’s relationship to the unknown force or forces that many people call deities. Do only that which is right. (Lord knows I…

At least, that’s what’s on the sign that got the man in the video arrested. The arrested man is the Reverend Orlando Bethel, and he is running for president of the United States as the Christian Reform Party candidate. He is waving his “SANTA IS SATAN” sign across the street from a school, apparently in…

Last Wednesday, an oil-filled container ship struck the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, spilling 58,000 gallons of “heavy-duty bunker fuel oil” into the San Francisco Bay. It could have been much worse, and I guess everyone’s lucky the ship didn’t take out one of the bridge towers. What intrigues me, though, is the way an intricate…

M. Simon’s post yesterday (about the anti-war crowd’s lack of faith in the American people — along with a plea for passage of the Veterans bill) was very appropriate on the eve of today, because today is Veteran’s Day. Here’s the official poster for this year: (The official gallery at the Department of Veterans Affairs…

I’m watching “Battle of Algiers” right now. Great, award-winning documentary-style war drama from 1967, which sympathetically portrays the uprising against the French in the late 1950s. Plenty of bombings, and plenty of stuff which will make plenty of light bulbs suddenly light up the minds of intellectual dimwits who are otherwise clueless about history. Really,…

I liked it better in the original German. Which you can actually find to the left or on YouTube. An amazing bit of work. This was prompted by one of the most recently honest Democrats in America. As long as we have Democrats like him there will be no orphan victories in America. No surprise…

While I wish I could have attended Blog World Expo, there’s just no way that I could have done that this week. So I’ve had to content myself reading about it at InstaPundit and at Pajamas Media. Some great Pajamas Media posts here, here, here, and here. And Glenn has more posts up than I…

I think Hillary is going to do well in Iowa. According to The Hill she is this year’s all time pork champion. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) has won tens of millions of dollars more in federal earmarks this year than her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, even though two of them have significantly…

Via Dr. Helen, I learned a couple of interesting things about this blog and myself. First, Dr. Helen links this site which rates any blog by level of reading difficulty. While her blog is written at the Genius level, Classical Values is written at the High School level. I don’t mind that at all, as…

Via an email, I was sent a link to a post by Matt Sanchez about the latest Republican gay sex (at least I guess it involves sex) scandal. I agree with some of what Sanchez says, and some of it I disagree with. The piece is titled “Hypocrisy or Decency? The Left’s Dirty Little Secret”…

Oregon Guy has a nice look at the panic in the financial markets these days. His take is: look at the value of the kissers. Sally vs Nancy. I like Sally. An almost not work safe picture of Sally can be found at the above link. Well any way I like Sally. Oh yeah. Where…

NeoSullivanistic Greenwaldians beware! According to Dave Price, the “increasingly effective” meme (which got Glenn Reynolds in so much trouble with Andrew Sullivan) is back with a vengeance: Major-General Joseph Fil, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, said al Qaeda in Iraq no longer had a foothold in any part of the city of 7 million…

I hate it when patently crazy ideas become respectable. But they do — especially when they’re promulgated as morality. (Even scientific morality!) Anyway, I found this John Feeney guy (linked in a Mark Steyn column that Glenn Reynolds had linked earlier), and I just couldn’t leave him alone. Nor should I. Guys like him just…

While I don’t have any need to hide who I am (and thus I don’t need the type of software I’m about to describe), I thought that as a public service I should correct some misinformation that’s been floating around — not only in some of these comments but in comments left to an earlier…

1527. Huh? Actually, 1527 is one of the most interesting (if underated) years in history. Rome was viciously sacked by a resentful brigand army nominally loyal to Charles V. Nicolo Machiavelli died dispirited in the same year. 1527 is considered to mark the end of the Roman Renaissance. And in what’s little more than a…

It would seem that every blog that does images has this photo. Being the conformist I am I think that Classical Values should have it too! If for no other reason than to shame those who haven’t supported the Democracy in Iraq project. Michael Yon says in his original post that accompanied the picture: The…

Kentucky politics normally don’t interest me, but from what I’ve seen of the governor’s race there, Ernie Fletcher is what I’d call a “Hillary Clinton Republican” — shrill, anti-gay, Ten Commandment wielding, and easily-stereotyped. Just what Hillary wants to run against. While they might be popular with the WorldNetDaily crowd (which likes to call itself…

It is mentioned quite frequently that burning up excess Plutonium is the best way to restrict its availability. A few days ago I was discussing the use of a Bussard reactor as a proliferation device. I looked at why it need not be a net power producer to be a useful high flux neutron source.…