Jim Rogers of Texas A&M writes in response to my post on the pledge of allegiance:
“the Supreme Court overturned Gobitis just three years later in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, thus making it one of the most short-lived precedents ever.
“That does not mean that Frankfurter’s comments aren’t illustrative of a position that is (or at least was) widely shared. But it does takes the sting out of your observation that Frankfurter wrote the “majority opinion” in the case. And the point probably does deserve to be mentioned in the post, since I take the thrust of your post to be an observation on official triumphalism.”
Notes on Anosmia
One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…
Empire of Unreality
Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…