thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb The Turnabout database got corrupted, so I had to restore it from a backup. Everything should be there except whatever was added between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. Wednsday New York time (I think one comment was lost). If you notice any oddities, do let me know.
Scientism and the cult of the expert are fundamental features of contemporary liberalism.
Liberalism intends to abolish oppression. Since oppression includes all subjection to the arbitrary will of another, liberalism attempts to base government action not on will, or on particular personal understandings of the good, but on what the situation objectively requires as determined … More ...
What does it mean that over 40% of Canadian teens (64% in French Canada) think America is “evil”?
The House of Lords has rejected a ban on spanking. Like other “social issues” the question of legitimate parental chastisement provides food for thought, and in fact leads very quickly to basic issues.
The arguments in favor of the ban are that “[s]macking can lead to battering which can lead to death,” and “children … More ...
The following dialogue is intended to clarify the basic arguments for philosophical liberalism and problems regarding those arguments. Since I’m not a liberal, it seems fair to me that liberalism should lose, but since it’s a dialogue it should present the liberal point of view as forcefully as possible. The liberalism I’m concerned with is … More ...
How religious issues present themselves to the mainstream press in conservative red-state America: according to the Salt Lake Tribune,
He’s written a useful discussion of the collapse of liberalism into radical-left extremism: Supremely Modern Liberals.
Hitchcock seems to waffle somewhat on the nature of liberalism itself and whether things might have turned out otherwise. That might be because he’s a historian and as such tends to view something like liberalism as a complex … More ...
Too much inclusiveness is a bad thing, British homosexualists have discovered. The Lords have voted to open up “civil partnerships,” designed by the Blair government as an exact replica of marriage for same-sex couples, to caregivers and others who live together in stable domestic arrangements. The move has transformed “gay rights” rhetoric in a radically … More ...
A friend writes:
… More ...You have this vision of liberalism or modernity as the attempt to create a self-sufficient manmade system which becomes a substitute for the given world, I wonder if you have any thoughts about how computers fit into that scheme. For many people the computer becomes a substitute for the real world. It
A couple of online petitions in support of marriage from Alliance for Marriage and Institute for Religion and Democracy.