Latest Posts
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Sunday Modern Love: A Taoist Moment
Today’s Modern Love column in the Sunday NYT is a beautiful reflection by a pregnant woman, Rhonda Kaysen, on whether or not to have an abortion. The possibility of a child has emerged at the wrong time: they… Continue reading
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China – Still Legalist?
In January I posted a piece, China: No Longer a Legalist Society, which, perhaps optimistically, suggested that popular resistance to state control of the flow of information, especially in the matter of book banning, pointed to a certain… Continue reading
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Confucian Institute Does the Confucian Thing
In the matter of Confucian plagiarism, which I mentioned a few days ago, it seems that the Confucius Institute Online has apologized for reprinting articles verbatim without attribution and taken down the material from its web site. That… Continue reading
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The Depths of Bush’s Failure
A notable day in Bush failure. First, we read that the main organization of al Qaeda, not the invocation of it in Iraq but the networked organization with nodes in Pakistan and Afghanistan and elsewhere, has reconstituted itself… Continue reading
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Lady Bird Johnson, Taoist Sage
When she had the chance to do what she wanted, both when she was close to political power and when she had retired, she planted flowers: "Whose spirits have not been lifted by the sight of scarlet tulips… Continue reading
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Confucian Plagarism
From China Law Blog, I learn how the Confucius Institute Online is taking whole articles without attribution from another web site, China Expat. In the comments at China Law Blog the possibility has been raised that such plagiarism… Continue reading
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Korean Confucian Abortion
So here I am this morning in the office, getting ready to plug in my memory key and upload the book chapter I am working on (this is chapter three, which discusses abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem… Continue reading
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So….Maybe China is a Confucian Society After All…Nah…
As regular readers of this blog know, I have, from time to time, taken the opportunity to link to various stories that show how contemporary China does not really live up to the title "Confucian." But here is… Continue reading
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Against Perfectionism
Add this to The Useless Tree summer reading list: Michael Sandel, The Case Against Perfectionism: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Harvard, 2007). It was reviewed today in the NYT by William Saletan. I have only read… Continue reading
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A Liberal China
As I apply Confucianism and Taoism to modern American and Chinese life, I am struck by a question: how liberal is China now? The question arises because both Confucianism and Taoism have to be accommodated, in… Continue reading
The Useless Tree 