thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb 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.
Hate-filled bigots have been stopped dead in their tracks: an organization had been sending families of fallen soldiers and policemen medallions with a picture of the Liberty Bell and the quotations “Liberty Rings For All Nations” and “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” On the reverse they had been putting the man’s name and the … More ...
The claim that the history of Europe from 1517 to 1648 shows that mixing politics and religion leads to endless violence, so that peace requires the secular state, always seemed odd to me. After all, states kill by nature, and they can be defended only if someone is willing to put his life on the … More ...
British law, like U.S. law. requires the physical reconstruction of the universe so handicaps are no longer handicaps. Failure to do the necessary reconstruction is strictly forbidden as a violation of fundamental human decency. That’s what laws against “discrimination” on the basis of disability are all about.
Such laws are yet another glorious social … More ...
I don’t expect to have reliable web access for the next few days (probably until Tuesday) and so may not post at all. Remember, though, that any registered user can start a new forum topic!
Keeping abreast of the times:
I’ve argued that contemporary liberalism is the flowering and not the corruption of classical liberalism. Once people accept the primacy of freedom, the basic principle of classical liberalism, what we have now naturally follows.
How far can that line of thought be taken? Liberalism, with its emphasis on the freedom and dignity of the individual, … More ...