Contradictions of inclusiveness

To be like one thing is to be different from another. The things that divide are therefore the same as the things that unite. That’s so obviously true that it’s hard to imagine how anyone could ever have seen “inclusiveness” as a possible ideal.

If it’s presented as an ideal there’s a shell game going … More ...

New York then and now

Here’s something I wrote for a local newspaper a few years back. It didn’t get published then, so I thought I’d give it a second chance now:

Senator Moynihan noted not long ago [in The Public Interest] that in 1943 there were 73,000 persons on relief in New York City. In that year there

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Tradition and the transcendent

What would be necessary for the rebirth of traditional society?

Traditional society is society oriented toward transcendent good. To say a good—the good life, say—has a transcendent element is to say we can’t make what it is altogether explicit or know it sufficiently on our own. If that is so, however, we must rely on … More ...