Cultural Contrarian, increasing self-knowledge one lesson at a time.
by Cultural Contrarian
Cultural Contrarian intertwines original content along with online curriculum through our association with Hillsdale College. Providing a listener with the ability to acquire additional evidence if they desire to reconcile, discern and ultimately define truth.
Episodes
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The Supreme Court Today Q & A
The Supreme Court Today Q & A
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Chevron v. NRDC Q & A
Chevron v. NRDC Q & A
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Brown v. Board of Education Q & A
Brown v. Board of Education Q & A
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D.C. v. Heller Q & A
D.C. v. Heller Q & A
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Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Q & A
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Q & A
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Texas v. Johnson: Freedom of Speech Q & A
Texas v. Johnson: Freedom of Speech Q & A
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Roe v. Wade: Q & A Session
Roe v. Wade: Q & A Session
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NFIB v. Sebelius: Federalism Q & A Session
NFIB v. Sebelius: Federalism Q & A Session
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Marbury v. Madison Q & A Session
Marbury v. Madison Q & A Session
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The Supreme Court Today
Today’s Supreme Court holds great power to shape American society, contrary to the Founders’ view of the Court as the “least dangerous” branch. To put this power in the hands of judges who believe the Constitution does not have a fixed meaning poses a serious threat to freedom. Returning the…
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Chevron v. NRDC: Administrative Law
In Chevron v. NRDC, the Supreme Court adopted what is known today as the Chevron Doctrine. This means the Court defers to an agency’s policy decisions, as well as to that agency’s determinations concerning the scope of its own power. Judicial deference to the administrative state—enabled by the...
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Brown v. Board of Education: Civil Rights
The Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The decision contributed to the establishment in the 20th century of the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of the Constitution. This outcome is contrary to the founders’…
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D.C. v. Heller: Second Amendment
The Second Amendment to the Constitution states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The Supreme Court has examined a number of cases involving the right to keep and bear arms. But D.C....
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Burwell v. Hobby Lobby: Religious Liberty
The First Amendment to the Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Over the course of American history, but beginning especially in the 20th century, the Supreme Court has heard numerous cases related to...
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Texas v. Johnson: Freedom of Speech
The founders did not think the right to freedom of speech encompassed every conceivable utterance or writing. Accordingly, the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause is meant to protect political speech. Over time, however, the Supreme Court has placed various forms of symbolic speech—also known as...
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Roe v. Wade: Privacy and Liberty
The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade declared a right to an abortion as part of a right to privacy—a term not found in the Constitution. The Court’s second landmark decision on the issue, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, gave abortion rights a new grounding in an understanding of liberty...
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NFIB v. Sebelius: Federalism
In NFIB v. Sibelius, one of the most controversial Supreme Court decisions in recent history, the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. At issue was not only the constitutional authority of Congress to mandate that citizens purchase...
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Lochner v. New York: Property Rights
The American founders held the view that the right to property is a natural right possessed by all human beings and that the fundamental purpose of the Constitution is to secure the natural rights of all American citizens. For many decades after the founding, the U.S. Supreme Court remained...
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Marbury v. Madison: Judicial Review
The judiciary is able to maintain its independence from the legislative and executive branches primarily by means of life tenure during good behavior. This independence makes it possible for the judiciary to declare laws unconstitutional. However, the power of judicial review does not make the...
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“The Abolition of Man”
In That Hideous Strength, the companion novel to The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis paints a picture of what life might look like if it were true that, as the characters Gaius and Titius contend, beauty and truth are subjective. The result is a universal despotism that emanates from an increasingly...
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“The Way”
In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis writes that adopting the idea that truth and beauty are purely subjective would lead to the abolition of man. To refute this idea, Lewis turns to what he calls “the Tao”—the Chinese word meaning “the way”—a set of general rules found in all cultures and times....
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Lewis’s Literary Criticism: Medieval Cosmology
C.S. Lewis attached significant importance to medieval cosmology, which viewed what we today call space as the heavens or the cosmos. This view contradicted the modern notion of space as simply a barren vacuum. Lewis reveled in this pre-Copernican understanding, not only because he thought it...
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Lewis’s Literary Criticism: The Value of Indirect Communication
C.S. Lewis was keenly interested in the value of indirect communication, and imaginative hiddenness was central to his literary criticism. Lewis believed that historical criticism and character criticism were valuable but had perfected their own terminology. Lewis was interested in a different…
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The Space Trilogy—A Cosmos of Old Wars and New Battles
Before he wrote Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis authored a science fiction trilogy, comprised of three books: Perelandra, Out of the Silent Planet, and That Hideous Strength. In this series, Lewis emphasizes the fact that human nature is beyond man’s will, the importance of objective truth, and...
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Narnia and the Storied Moral World
In writing his Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis made a bold attempt to rehabilitate the modern imagination. Lewis believed that the ideas and experience of modernity undermine the imagination, and his fiction aims to re-sensitize readers to the wonders of God’s creation. Originally conceived…
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Imagination and Reason, Part 2
C.S. Lewis believed that a reasoned defense of Christianity, if it is to be effective, should approximate the language of the Christ story imaginatively. Since imagination is the organ of meaning, Lewis almost always began his apologetic works by immersing the reader in meaningful situations....
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Lewis’s Apologetics: Imagination and Reason, Part One
C.S. Lewis was the greatest Christian apologist of the 20th century. The success of his apologetics was due in large part to the skillful way in which he presented them—with imaginative skill and imaginative intent. Lewis believed that the human faculty of reason is the organ of truth and the…
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"Men Without Chests"
C.S. Lewis is most widely known for his fiction and his Christian apologetics. However, he was also a professor at Oxford—and later Cambridge—where he was a first-rate scholar of English literature. In his philosophical work, The Abolition of Man, Lewis argued that truth, beauty, and the good are...
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10 Descartes: Radical Doubt and Rationalism
In Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes argues for a radical skepticism of the senses. He makes the case for a rationalist philosophy grounded in the self—“I think, therefore I am.” Readings: Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditations I-II Study Guide
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9 Identity Politics Today
Identity politics holds that America is fundamentally and irredeemably racist. This ideology, which has become dominant in American public life, requires discrimination in order to elevate and privilege the identities of the oppressed. Readings: “Combahee River Collective Statement,” 1977 Study...
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9 Bacon: The Emergence of Modern Philosophy
Francis Bacon criticized the Western philosophical tradition for being barren of utility and built on a poor foundation. In The Great Instauration, he outlines a plan for the construction of a radically new philosophy that seeks to command, rather than understand, nature. Readings: Bacon, The…
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8 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Rise of Affirmative Action
The understanding of civil rights in America has been transformed fundamentally since Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The view that every individual has a right to equal treatment under the law has been replaced by a system of affirmative action that demands race be taken into…
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8 Aquinas: The Natural Law
Thomas Aquinas argues that God governs the universe by directing all things to the good or to their perfection. In the second part of the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas explains that rational beings participate in this divine plan through the natural law. Readings: Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I…
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7 The Beloved Community or Black Separatism?: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 represent two of the most important achievements of the civil rights movement in America. Despite these achievements, Americans were split regarding the best tactics for ensuring the protection of civil and political rights for black...
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7 Aquinas: The Existence of God
Medieval Christian philosophy is characterized by a dramatic encounter between ancient philosophy and revelation. In the first part of the Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas reveals the beauty and power of these traditions in his argument for the existence of God. Readings: Aquinas, Summa…
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6 Industrial Education or Talented Tenth?: Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois
Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, the two most important black leaders at the beginning of the twentieth century, offered competing views regarding the best means to secure justice and equality in America. Whereas Washington sought to elevate black Americans through an industrial education...
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6 Aristotle: Logic and Reasoning
Logic is concerned with right reasoning about reality. In his six books on logic—collectively known as the Organon—Aristotle demonstrates how we can gain a deeper understanding of reality through inductive and deductive reasoning and dialectical arguments Readings: Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book…
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5 Reconstruction, Segregation, and Disenfranchisement
Reconstruction ended after the disputed election of 1876. This initiated an era of divided government in which the protections of the rights of black people secured during Reconstruction were eroded and gradually replaced by systems of segregation and disenfranchisement. Readings: Enforcement Act...
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5 Aristotle: Metaphysics, Physics, and the Soul
In the first line of the Metaphysics, Aristotle writes, “All human beings desire to know.” He adds that wonder leads us to investigate the four kinds of causes of natural things: material, efficient, formal, and final. Readings: Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, Chapters 1-2 Aristotle, Physics…
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4 The First Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment
After the Civil War, Republicans in Congress faced the challenging task of restoring the Union and protecting the rights of the newly emancipated former slaves. Opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the threat of its repeal once the former Confederate states were readmitted to the Union...
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14 C.S. Lewis: The Recovery of Reason
In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis confronts a false image of human reason that promotes a corrosive skepticism and often culminates in irrationalism. Lewis looks to a universal order of values—the Tao—as an antidote to the “men without chests” produced by modern philosophy Study Guide
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4 Aristotle: The Moral and Intellectual Virtues
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle seeks to discuss the best way of life that fulfills our human nature. The two possibilities—philosophy and politics—encompass the highest human activity and the conditions necessary to promote that activity. Readings: Aristotle, Ethics, Book I, Chapters 1-2...
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3 The Ideology of Slavery
Slavery was as a thorough-going rejection of the founders’ understanding of natural and civil rights, and served as a corrosive force that undermined the freedom and character of everything it touched. Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass argued that the best way to overcome slavery, and to...
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13 Nietzsche: The Crisis of Reason
Friedrich Nietzsche argues that modern philosophy and science destroyed our ability to believe that the world is intelligible and ordered. Nietzsche argues that man cannot escape the cave and understand the truth about reality. Therefore, the philosopher must create a fiction to direct human…
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3 Plato: Philosophy and Liberal Education
In Book VI of the Republic, Plato reveals the nature of philosophy through two famous images: the divided line and the allegory of the cave. He depicts philosophy as a dramatic journey in which the human soul is turned from false opinions and images and toward a true understanding of reality....
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2 Civil Rights and the American Founding
Civil rights can be divided into two main categories: substantive and procedural. Substantive rights—such as freedom of speech, religion, and assembly—are drawn directly from the law of nature; and, procedural rights—such as the right to trial by jury—are established by society as a means to…
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12 Kant: The Grand Modern Synthesis
Immanuel Kant offers a synthesis of the competing strains of modern philosophy and presents an account of morality that seeks to preserve human freedom. Kant concludes that morality must be based on duty for its own sake and governed by the categorical imperative. Readings: Kant, Grounding for…
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2 Plato: Music, Poetry, and Justice
In the Republic, Plato attempts to describe justice, first in the city, and then in the human soul. He argues that a man's soul must be prepared by a good musical education to recognize truth. Readings: Plato, Republic, Book I, Excerpts Plato, Republic, Book II, Excerpts Plato, Republic, Book…
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1 Why Civil Rights Matter.
America was founded with the understanding that the purpose of government is to secure the unalienable rights of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Civil rights, in turn, are derived from and serve to protect the natural rights of all American citizens. Readings: Declaration of...
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11 Hume: Radical Doubt and Empiricism
David Hume—like Descartes before him—questions man’s ability to acquire scientific knowledge. Contrary to Descartes, Hume adopts an empirical approach that attempts to account for the apparent limitations of experience and observation. Readings: Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Introduction,...
About this show
Cultural Contrarian intertwines original content along with online curriculum through our association with Hillsdale College. Providing a listener with the ability to acquire additional evidence if they desire to reconcile, discern and ultimately define truth.
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Cultural Contrarian