Judge Alexis G. Krot is a district judge for the 31st District Court in Hamtramck, Michigan, appointed by Governor Rick Snyder to the bench in August 2016. In a case that has now gone viral, Judge Krot shamed a 72-year-old cancer patient for failing to tend his lawn despite being too physically weak to do so. Continue reading
Author Archives: Irfan Khawaja
Prolegomenon to Any Future Cancellation that Claims the Mantle of Social Justice
As someone who lacks permanent housing, I spend a lot of time in public places. One of them is the public library, which I regard as a second home. So I’m sensitive to how the public library is run. The library I happen to frequent, the Princeton Public Library, is one of the nicest in the state, in one of the most affluent communities in New Jersey. Naturally, it’s heavily patrolled by private security guards. I have no objection to the use of private security guards, or even to the idea of their heavily patrolling the library. What I object to are double standards when it comes to what they do. Continue reading
Novak Djokovic: Cancelled
I’ve defended both the idea of cancellation in the abstract, as well as specific cancellations, done in specific ways, on this blog. My critics have done an end-run around what I’ve actually said about cancellation, as well as the examples I’ve adduced, focusing on the unintended consequences of cancellation that lead, or supposedly lead, to “lynch mobs,” the “thought police,” and the like.*
I still have a great deal more to say about cancellation as both a philosophical and a historical matter, but in honor of one of the greatest cancelers in American history, Martin Luther King Jr (whose birthday is celebrated tomorrow), I’ve decided to descend to casuistry and inaugurate Cancel Week: a week of posts devoted to nothing but cancellations and anti-cancellations. (Sotto voce confession: I have a lot more than seven examples at my disposal, so this “week” may last awhile. But if revolutionism entails revisionism, revisionism about the meaning of “week” is to be expected.)
Continue readingSolidarity with Umm al Khayr
I was a guest of Hajj Suleman’s twice at Umm al Khayr in the South Hebron Hills, once in 2017 and once in 2019. But for the pandemic, I’d have seen him again in the summer of 2020: my flight was booked, but circumstances conspired against my going. He’s now fighting for life against injuries sustained in his struggle for justice (see the article just below).
Carol Warren Welsh, RIP
I don’t remember the last time, if ever, that I ran three memorial posts in such close succession, but I wanted to mark the passing of my friend Carol Welsh (b. 1970) on the morning of Wednesday, December 29, 2021. Carol died of complications sustained over a 21-year struggle with a brain tumor, a recurrent ependymoma malignant by location. Continue reading
Omicron, Delta, and the Revenge of Count von Count
I heard today from a physician whose hospital is on the verge of collapse, and an ICU nurse at a different hospital who is likely struggling with COVID, but being instructed not to get tested so as not to miss work. Two fairly typical stories from the edge of the healthcare abyss, but entirely predictable and a long time in the making. “Hospitals are understaffed” is now common knowledge, not a news story. The question is why. There’s no way to answer that question in the absence of information about staffing and budget decisions, themselves connected to facts about medical billing and collecting. This article is a case in point.
Hiromi Shinya, RIP
I hate to run two memorial/obituary posts in a row, but this post by Chris Sciabarra, memorializing the generally unknown Hiromi Shinya, deserves a wider audience. I won’t try to summarize; just read it.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, RIP
I never knew either of my grandfathers, but every night in high school, growing up in the 1980s, I came home from school and soccer practice, said my prayers, and turned on the TV for the latest news from or about two elderly men half a world away–Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.
Fatal Vision: Boosters, Variants, and Equity
Getting a booster is no panacea, but not getting one may be a fatal mistake. That, at any rate, is the finding of a set of Israeli studies in the New England Journal of Medicine, one published in October, the other published just a few days ago. An excerpt from the abstract of the “Conclusions” section of the latter:
Across the age groups studied, rates of confirmed Covid-19 and severe illness were substantially lower among participants who received a booster dose of the BNT162b2 vaccine than among those who did not.
Read both articles all the way through for all of the relevant provisos and qualifications, but I think it’s fair to summarize both by saying that they jointly found that boosters reduced the incidence of both serious morbidity and mortality due to COVID-19, inclusive of all variants but Omicron (about which it’s too early to tell). Continue reading
Anti-Fascist Questions for Anti-Woke Warriors
For the past several years, “cancel culture” has been held out, mostly on the political Right, as a terrible thing that must be stopped. Personally, I regard “cancel culture” as an instance of what Ayn Rand called an “anti-concept,”
an unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept.
The legitimate concept is a principled commitment to non-legalized moral accountability, which “cancel culture” equates, tendentiously, with mob rule and mass hysteria. For those wedded to the term, a principled commitment to moral accountability, outside of legalized officialdom, just is mob rule and mass hysteria. What else could moral accountability be?
Continue reading
Policy of Truth 