Michael Kimmelman, the New York Times art critic, offered yesterday in his Abroad column a remarkably ill-argued defense of the British Museum’s continued possession of the Elgin marbles, which, two hundred years ago, were taken from the Acropolis in Athens by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to Constantinople. The marbles are only among the more […]
The Dominating Mentality of Conquest
There, I said it. Conservatives have sometimes been annoyed by my use of that term – dominating mentality of conquest. It is not the kind of language I like to use. It bespeaks a manner of, in this case postcolonial, academic jargon I disdain. Heidegger said that “Language is the house of being.” Jargon closes […]