Word: yardstick
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...have little memory for weather, but Yardstick recalls that last Monday the climate was not conducive to protesting Columbus Day. It was cold. But it was also cold three years ago, when Yardstick was a first-year in Weld Hall and Columbus Day protesters chattered outside his window all night long, exchanging the kind of ideas that only emerge in the generous, delirious pall of late night. And on every single recent Columbus Day prior to last Monday, there was another sleep-over j’accuse colloquium on the steps of Widener Library...
...However, Yardstick does protest the unfortunate fact that, because Columbus has his own holiday, he is a rich target for coarse cartooning. Yardstick also protests that it is ahistorical to view Columbus through the lens of today’s moral standards. It is the kind of work that pop historians have done for years with their Troubled Genius biographies: Kepler was a nut, Hemingway was a drunk, and don’t get us started on Rousseau...
...Yardstick submits that Columbus was as brave as all the myths and rhyming couplets say he was. Columbus was a fanatical leader with a superior sense of Manifest Destiny, like Hemingway with more focus, like Kepler with a better-developed sense of history, like Rousseau with more diplomatic facility. Columbus’ lifetime achievements are monumental: He captured the faltering imagination of Western Europe. He gave to her people the only the thing that could resuscitate her failing fortunes: hope...
Fine. But Yardstick has the temerity to venture further: Columbus did not commit any acts that were immoral by the standards of his day. Of course, in 1492 there were some who thought it morally wrong to enslave the native people of Spain’s conquered lands, just as there are some who today think it is morally wrong to drive SUVs—a debate Yardstick will leave for another column. But timid and sporadic discussion does not a moral consensus make. In fact, according to the eminent social historian Anthony Pagden, the debate was a question...
...case can be made that Bush, while off to a smooth start, doesn't have all that much to hype. A President without foreign policy experience got the stranded crew home from China, and his public statements have generally been in key. But by the yardstick of Rove's ambition - creating a locked-in Republican majority - Bush has a long way to go. The Great Transformation was to begin with passage of his education-reform plan, which the Senate is set to debate this week. The vouchers and testing proposals at its heart have been washed away and diluted, respectively...