thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb Social policies promoting inclusiveness have great moral prestige and enjoy powerful political support, Nonetheless, some people oppose them. These questions and answers are intended to present reasons for opposition in a way that depends less on economic considerations than the usual libertarian arguments against coerced association. They concentrate instead on the social and cultural … More ...
Welcome to the Culture Wars page!
We present this page, including discussion and resources, in hopes of helping clarify issues in a battle that often seems confused.
The issues presented here can be discussed in our forum. Your participation is welcome. You can also email the author, Jim Kalb, or add a … More ...
This is the February 1, 2005 revision of a summary of questions and objections regarding conservatism. Additional questions and comments are welcome. The conservatism discussed is traditionalist American conservatism. Other varieties are touched on in section 6, and their adherents are urged to draft additional FAQs. For further discussion and relevant links, see the Traditionalist … More ...
Welcome to the Anti-Feminist Page!
“Women’s issues” are so contentious and so difficult to discuss today in a way that takes actual belief and experience into account that it often seems easier to avoid them. Nonetheless, they are basic to the lives of all of us, so open discussion is necessary and we hope … More ...
John Dewey (1859-1952) remains an extremely influential thinker whose thought sums up important trends in American life. Many oppose his thought and the trends it favors. He wrote a huge amount (his collected works run to 37 volumes) and frequently expressed himself unclearly or outright contradicted himself. Perhaps as a consequence, too many … More ...
A lawyer with mainstream liberal views on the Establishment Clause sent me a note taking issue with some of my comments on my page on the Establishment of Religion and I responded. Here’s an edited version of the exchange:
… More ...Liberal Lawyer: How can you justify the assertion that liberalism is implicitly totalitarian? A society
A couple of items among many to show how things stand in law, learning and the church:
There was shock, horror and head-shaking in my late ’70s law school procedure class when we read a Supreme Court opinion to the effect that education wasn’t a fundamentally adversarial relationship and it didn’t make sense to insist on full adversarial procedure (notice, a hearing, right to counsel, right to confront witnessess etc.) before students … More ...
A correspondent criticized my statement in Science, Rationality and the Good to the effect that “‘rationality’ is itself an evaluative term, and to say a proposition is rational is to say that it should be believed—an evaluative statement”:
… More ...In science, a proposition worthy of belief needs to comport with reality. A proposition comports with reality
There’s some interesting history on the Supreme Court’s anti-religious turn in the last century in an article by a couple of Catholic social scientists, Is American Democracy Safe for Catholicism? It seems that the big change occurred around 1940, when the Court stopped talking about “civil liberty,” a traditional conception that recognized the common good, … More ...