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4563Film and Propaganda: The Lessons of the Nazi Film IndustryReason Papers 35 (1): 203-219. 2013.This essay is my review of Erwin Leiser’s excellent documentary film Germany Awake. This classic film first aired in Germany in 1968, and remains to this day one of the best surveys of major Nazi-era movies and exactly what messages they were meant to convey. The film underscores the emphasis the regime put on film as one of the premier mechanisms of propaganda, though Leiser’s film points out that most of the cinema produced by the Nazi regime was not pure propaganda, but mainly entertainment. …Read more
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367Memorializing Genocide I: Earlier Holocaust DocumentariesReason Papers 38 (2): 64-88. 2016.In this essay, I discuss in detail two of the earliest such documentaries: Death Mills (1945), directed by Billy Wilder; and Nazi Concentration Camps (1945), directed by George Stevens. Both film-makers were able to get direct footage of the newly-liberated concentration camps from the U.S. Army. Wilder served as a Colonel in the U.S. Army’s Psychological Warfare department in 1945 and was tasked with producing a documentary on the death camps as well as helping to restart Germany’s film industr…Read more
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150Book review of: W. Smith, A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement (review)Liberty (September): 47-48. 2010.
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169Book review of: P. Kitcher, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism (review)California Review (November). 1985.
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539Two problems of inductionDialectica 39 (1): 53-74. 1985.SummaryIn this paper, two different theoretical problems of induction are delineated. The first problem is addressed; the second problem is deferred to the sequel to this paper. The first problem of induction is taken to be the seemingly unformalizable nature of traditional inductive arguments. It is shown that the problem does not arise out of some particularly dubious argument form , but rather from the presupposition that inductive “logic” is, like deductive logic, assertoric. Rather , induct…Read more
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108Book review of: O. Gersemann, Cowboy Capitalism: European Myths, American Reality (review)Liberty (August): 37-41. 2005.This essay is my review of Olaf Gersemann’s book, Cowboy Capitalism: European Myths, American Reality. Gersemann was a reporter for Germany’s largest business weekly magazine, and he came to America to write an expose of the weakness of the American economy. What he found instead—and argued in detail—is that the American economy was robust, for better off than commonly believed in Europe. I finish the review by pointing out some things he overlooked, such as the fact that the U.S. has paid and c…Read more
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324Portraits of Egoism in Classic Cinema III: Nietzschean PortrayalsReason Papers 37 (2). 2015.In this essay, I look at two films as possible exemplars of the Nietzschean view of egoism. Compulsion is based on the infamous 1924 Leopold and Loeb murder case. In the movie, two arrogant young men—one of whom admires Nietzsche and preaches the (apparently Nietzschean) view that the strong and superior don’t need to follow conventional morality—kill a boy to prove they can outsmart the unter-menschen police. For a different take on what Nietzsche may have had in mind as “the Overman,” …Read more
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173Movie Review of: Temple GrandinLiberty 1. 2011.In this essay, I review an extraordinary bio flick, Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin is a professor of animal science, and to achieve her distinguished career she had to deal with her autism. The film explores what it is to suffer this disease, but it also explores her extraordinary work involving making slaughterhouses more humane.
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381Does Virtue Epistemology Provide a Better Account of the Ad Hominem Argument? A Reply to Christopher JohnsonPhilosophy 86 (1): 95-119. 2011.Christopher Johnson has put forward in this journal the view that ad hominem reasoning may be more generally reasonable than is allowed by writers such as myself, basing his view on virtue epistemology. I review his account, as well as the standard account, of ad hominem reasoning, and show how the standard account would handle the cases he sketches in defense of his own view. I then give four criticisms of his view generally: the problems of virtue conflict, vagueness, conflation of speech acts…Read more
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168Book review of: H. Johns and P. Omerod, Happiness, Economics, and Public Policy (review)The Independent Review 14 (3): 458-460. 2010.
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785Whence Did German Propaganda Films Derive Their Power?Reason Papers 38 (1). 2016.In this essay, I review in great detail Ian Garden’s outstanding book, The Third Reich’s Celluloid War. Garden begins by discussing propaganda theory and then discusses not just Nazi feature films and documentaries, but television as well. (The Nazis had the earliest TV network). All in all, the regime produced over 1,300 feature films during its time in power. Garden also compares Nazi propaganda films to British and American ones.
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98Book review of: J. Simon, A Life Against the Grain: The Autobiography of an Unconventional Economist (review)Liberty (September): 46-50. 2004.
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8The Dialectic of DiscoveryDissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 1982.This study, The Dialectic of Discovery, addresses the long-standing debate about the possibility of a "logic of discovery." Regarding this issue, four interlocking theses are defended. The first thesis is that there is indeed a logic of discovery, namely, dialectic, which is an extension of underlying inference and question logics. ;The second thesis is that this fact has been overlooked because the view of knowledge that has dominated Western philosophy, a view I dub "the solipsistic concept of…Read more
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383Book review of: D. Flynn, Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas (review)Liberty (September): 47-49. 2006.
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191Movie review of: (TV Series) "Route 66"Liberty (July 2010): 50-52. 2010.This essay is my review of the classic TV series, Route 66. It was a classic “buddy movie,” with two young men who tour the country in a gorgeous 1956 Chevy Corvette, staying in various towns and working at various blue-collar jobs. The acting was generally superb, and the scripts were mainly written by the fine script writer Stirling Silliphant, and produced by the famous producer Herbert Leonard. I suggest that this 50-year-old series tells us a lot about cultural change in America during th…Read more
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138Movie review of: The CartelLiberty 44-45. 2010.This essay is my review of Bob Bowden’s excellent documentary The Cartel. It is a powerful indictment of public schools and public school teachers’ unions. In a crucial part of the film, we see minority parents at a charter school lottery. Charter schools, like voucher private schools, give parents school choice—although charter schools are public schools technically, but run fairly independently. They are so popular, and the school districts allow so few of them, that parents must apply by lott…Read more
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39Book review of: D. N. Walton, Logical Dialogue-Games and Fallacies (review)Philosophia 17 (1): 97-99. 1987.
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131Book review of: C. Robinson, Arthur Seldon: A Life for Liberty (review)Liberty (November): 42-43. 2009.
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166Book review of: M. Schagrin, R. Dipert, and W. Rapaport, Logic: A Computer Approach (review)Philosophia 17 (4): 557-558. 1987.
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