thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb Faith and the Church
Tradition always points to something other than itself, so acceptance of one’s own tradition — and therefore knowledge — involves faith. Just as institutions and even reason depend on the complex of memories, understandings and habits that constitutes tradition, tradition depends on its connection to a larger order of which it … More ...
Tradition and the Good
But if liberalism is inadequate as a basis for social and political life, what is the rational alternative?
The question comes down to the problem of the social and political good. To say something is good is to say it is a reasonable goal, one worth choosing after consideration of what … More ...
Liberalism, Tradition and Faith
We live in odd times. Rationalized insanity like political correctness (“PC”) and “zero tolerance” show a growing conflict between public standards and normal human understandings that makes common-sense judgments impossible. The same conflict has disordered activities that rely on formal standards, like education and scholarship, practices that express public ideals, like … More ...
Some conservatives out in California have a good project, keeping after the LA Times and other media outlets about left-wing spin and distortion: Oh, That Liberal Media. Current themes include what looks like a campaign of defamation against Justice Scalia. The posters are neoconish, which I suppose makes sense for people whose world is … More ...
It turns out that upwardly-mobile Republican Catholic Justice Kennedy was going to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade in 1992, but ended up casting the decisive pro-Roe vote. It seems that Blackmun, O’Connor and Souter brought him around by working him over in private.
Because of the switch, the Casey decision ended up … More ...
Tom Woods has a piece at LewRockwell.com on Catholic social teaching discussing the relation between (resolutely free-market) Austrian economics and various papal pronouncements of the past century, and why orthodox Catholics who also like Austrian economics should follow what their economic theories say alleviates poverty or whatever rather than take the Pope’s advice when the … More ...
Landmarks on the road to a glorious future:
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 ...