thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb The way things are today is novel enough that to get a grip on it you have to look at the grand sweep of history, and at basics like what people think about themselves and the world. Here’s an attempt:
Before the first cosmopolitan civilizations arose in antiquity, men lived in a world that seemed … More ...
Canada Revenue Agency is warning churches to be silent on moral issues when they become political issues. So they have to keep quiet at present about “gay marriage,” at least if they’re on the wrong side. It’s not clear how far the principle reaches. Do the Catholics lose their tax exemption if they deny communion … More ...
In a way, it doesn’t make much sense to ask what was wrong in the American Founding that contributed to the pickle we’re in today. We’ve got our problems but other countries mostly outdo us. We invented PC, and first made abortion a legally enforceable fundamental right, but so far at least we don’t … More ...
With reference to the supposed liberal respect for the consent of the people, it’s worth pointing out that the attempt to force universal abortion rights on the whole world on international human rights grounds is going ahead full tilt, with a UN Committee developing its plans establishing abortion on demand for women and girls … More ...
Right-wingers puzzle over how to explain liberalism and the Left. Where do they come from—a sheltered upbringing, arrested emotional development, scientism, a general lack of realism, managerial class self-interest? Some even look at modern culture and politics and conclude that the love of equality is simply the love of degradation and death, so it’s the … More ...
Liberalism can be understood as a view that evolved and triumphed in a contentious political environment through a sort of philosophical jiu-jitsu. It wins all arguments by not arguing but rather using its opponents’ own force against them. Liberalism claims it has no points of its own to make, it accepts all your points … More ...
A view of politics that’s become quite old-fashioned but still pops up now and then is that it’s based on conflict between haves and have-nots. The view never made a lot of sense, because those in a position to make their influence felt in politics are always by definition “haves.” Hence the search for authentic … More ...
A correspondent raised the issue of the historic identity of the American people, and whether it depended on the exclusion of nonwhites and in particular blacks. He suggested (a bit modishly, I thought) that to the extent concrete ethnicity became less important during the course of our history a sort of constructed pseudo-ethnicity based on … More ...
The major German media have announced that they are abandoning a language-reform program that the government has been pushing the past 6 years. They’re returning to the old way of writing (not to Fraktur, the old black-letter script they used before the war, but to immensely long words, lots of commas, and the double … More ...
The ABA already has rules that keep judges from belonging to organizations that think there are differences between men and women that matter in personal and social interactions and that adjust their practices accordingly (that “discriminate based on gender”). Now they’re talking about extending that rule to organizations that believe sexual oddities and perversities could … More ...