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Michael Novak

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Author

The Resume

    (September 9, 1933-February 17, 2017)
    Born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania
    American author and philosopher most well known for his literate and scholarly defenses of the Catholic Church and traditional Western culture, particularly personal economic freedom
    Education: BA in Philosophy and English from Stonehill College (1956), STB in Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian College in Rome, Italy in 1958 and an MA in Philosophy from Harvard in 1966
    Taught at SUNY, Stanford, Syracuse, and Notre Dame
    Some of his forty books included; The Tiber was Silver (1962), Belief and Unbelief, a Philosophy of Self-Knowledge (1965), Naked I Leave (1970), The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982), Moral Clarity in a Nuclear Age (1983), Catholic Social Thought and Liberal Institutions ((1984), Free Persons and the Common Good (1988), The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1993), Universal Hunger for Liberty: Why the Crash of Civilizations is Not Inevitable (2004), No One Sees God: The Dark Nights of Atheists and Believers (2008), Writing from Left to Right: My Journey from Liberal to Conservative (2013), Social Justice Isn't What you think It Is (2015)
    United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from 1981-1982
    Quotes included; 'Love is not a feeling of happiness, love is a willingness to sacrifice,' 'The most critical threat to our freedom is a failure to appreciate the power of truth,' 'Our capacity for self-deception has no known limits,' 'The Lord God, the creator of Judaism and the God of Judaism and Christianity, empowered our minds and gave us the ability to question.'
    Winner of the 1994 Templeton Prize
    No relation to Robert Novak
    He was the first Roman Catholic to become a humanities professor at Stanford university.

Why he might be annoying:

    In his youth he espoused the goofy liberal ideas that were so popular during the sixties and was a dedicated socialist.
    He wrote campaign speeches for George McGovern when McGovern was running for president.
    He spent years studying for the priesthood but suddenly left his studies without explanation just a few months before his ordination.
    He quit his position as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission after less than two years.
    Against all historical evidence, he believed that it was in human nature to be free and wrote, 'The universe moves in the direction of liberty.'
    In his youth, he was very critical of his own Catholic Church on multiple matters while studying to be a priest in that very Church!

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was one of America's greatest philosophers and one of its most fierce defenders of liberty.
    Even when he embraced the ideals of the radical left; he criticized their utopianism as unrealistic and at odds with human nature, writing, 'To know oneself is to disbelieve utopia.'
    He died painfully of colon cancer.
    His, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism was one the most influential books of the 20th Century and was directly credited with the rise of anti-communism in Poland and Czechoslovakia and not only has been translated into all major Western languages but, Bengali, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese as well.
    He was a dedicated family man and had three children with his wife.
    His, The Joy of Sports was selected by Sports Illustrated magazine as one of the 100 greatest sports books of all time.
    He had a really nice smile.

Credit: tom_jeffords


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 8 Votes: 62.50% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 9 Votes: 44.44% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 17 Votes: 58.82% Annoying