thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb Recent reminders that things that aren’t well founded don’t last no matter how settled they seem:
Liberalism never sleeps. Even as I write, its intellectual and operational functionaries are beavering away all over the world working out the implications of what now counts as the One True Belief:
A reminder that the culture war has been the same, not only in principle but in detail, for at least the past quarter-century: James Hitchcock’s Competing Ethical Systems. It’s a discussion of the nature of “pluralism” and the significance of the assault on traditional sexual standards that was written in 1981 but could as … More ...
My liberal lawyer correspondent (previous exchanges here and here) has asked how to compare and decide between a liberal and a more traditionalist and Catholic approach to politics and society. Here’s an edited version of the exchange:
… More ...Liberal Lawyer: Is it possible to come up with an objective standard by which one could
Rationalized insanity like “zero tolerance” and political correctness suggests there is something basically irrational in social life today that has to do with a conflict between publicly compulsory standards and normal human expectations. Some people try to laugh the conflict off and make jokes about PC or whatever. Others deny it or explain it away—these … More ...
My exchange with my Finnish correspondent continues (previous installments are here, here, and here). This time he’s pressing the issue of the value of tradition:
… More ...Finnish Correspondent: Your reliance on tradition seems misplaced. Isn’t it just functionalism? Some social arrangements may work, although they are not right. For instance, abortion has
Here’s a useful FAQ on the Inquisition put together by a PhD student at Cambridge. The reputation and symbolic status of the Inquisition, it seems, has much more to do with the needs of those who appeal to the symbol than with the institution itself.
Leaving the bigotry and darkness of Old Spain for the … More ...
Postmodern architecture, like “postmodern” productions generally, notoriously tries to disorient. I suppose the justification is that we can’t grasp reality, and to be oriented is to presume that we can do so—to be precritical, monocultural, fundamentalist, Cartesian or whatnot. If that’s so, then to disorient us might shake us out of our self-satisfied lethargy … More ...
I’ve argued that sex is right only when it helps constitute an enduring union between two persons that points beyond personal interest because of what the union is, and that can be so only in the case of sex within marriage that is open to new life. Someone who commented on my Sexual Morality FAQ… More ...
The idea that change as such is good, and resistance to change ignorant, weak, fearful, self-centered, and at least mildly pathological, goes with the view that the past is a mass of bigotry and oppression redeemed only by its foreshadowing of the here-and-now. There are obvious problems with such views: