History

Reasons why jailing David Irving for "Holocaust Denial" was a bad idea, cont.: It allows Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to say that clearly there must be something to this point of view if "researchers" can be imprisoned for pursuing research from a "different perspective". And, of course, implicitly he's arguing that despite all your fancy, high-falutin' talk, you in the west are no better than the rest of us. You censor too.  Tend to the beam in your own eye before looking to the mote in mine etc etc.

God knows how reliable this sort of sillyness really is (not very, probably) but: Students at many of the country's most prestigious colleges and universities are graduating with less knowledge of American history, government, and economics than they had as incoming freshmen, with Harvard University seniors scoring a "D+" average on a 60-question multiple-choice exam about civic literacy. According to a report released yesterday by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the average college senior at the 50 colleges and universities polled did not earn a passing grade. You can take the test yourself here. I confess I did so with much trepidation. It turns out that I don't know much about judicial review or how the bond market works.

Of course I agree with Megan that dog-fighting is a bad, even wicked thing. Still, I was struck by her (cutting) question: did Michael Vick and his pals think that by - allegedly! - executing and torturing dogs that had lost fights this would be a case of pour encourager les autres? Voltaire's famous quip is one of my favourites. "In this country" he remarked, speaking of Britain, "it is thought good to kill an admiral from time to time, to give courage to the others". When it's trotted out these days it's generally accompanied by an arched eyebrow as though the very idea of this was absurd. But Voltaire was more right than he knew...