thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb Black parents are upset that a white principal spelled out the N-word as an example of something that shouldn’t be used, while congressmen are upset that the FTC now allows the F-word to be used as an expletive.
These issues are impossible to decide in a way people agree makes sense. Since language is part … More ...
The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights is upset because Kwanzaa and Hanukkah cards put out by major companies are ever-so-respectful, while Christmas cards are tasteless, irreligious, and downright offensive. The Catholic League thinks that demonstrates bigotry, to which (they say) multiculturalism is congenitally related. The analysis isn’t wrong, exactly, but it’s less-than-illuminating. … More ...
The confidential memoranda I mentioned recently outlining the strategy to manipulate international law to make abortion a universal enforceable human right have been read into the Congressional Record (*.pdf file) and so are publicly available. There’s nothing particularly surprising about them, but it’s useful to have what’s going on laid out, especially in an age … More ...
A couple of weeks ago I noted the move among Muslims in Canada to use the new arbitration law there to make Shari’ah binding in civil and domestic cases. Wasting no time, they’ve already set up an Islamic Institute to formalize the process.
At present the stated plan is for the parties to a particular … More ...
I haven’t gone through the opinions in today’s McCain-Feingold decision, but was struck by an excerpt from Justice Scalia’s dissent that shows how much at odds with contemporary liberalism his views really are:
… More ...“Who could have imagined that the same court which, within the past four years, has sternly disapproved of restriction upon such inconsequential
In extreme cases, reason does sometimes creep in: fewer than half the people in the European Union’s member states now support the EU project. Support has dropped below 50% even in France, where centralization is generally considered a requirement of logic. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Normally, when the … More ...
About 45,000 Brazilians are murdered each year, perhaps 85% by unregistered firearms and the rest mostly by knives, blows, strangling, poison and whatnot. Government is by nature a monopoly, so in a sense it is not surprising that the failure of government to carry out its basic responsibility to provide for public safety has led … More ...
I pointed out a while back that the claim Islam needs a Protestant Reformation is just silly: they’ve already had their Reformation, and it gave the world Wahhabism. A Catholic professor of philosophy has taken a similar idea and developed it in connection with Hayek’s conceptions of tradition and the rule of law: Does Islam … More ...
The definition of “theocratic aggression” continues to expand, as does the battle against the ever-growing list of things treated as such:
A correspondent sent me a lengthy set of comments on my Conservatism FAQ. Some of them seemed like they might be of general interest, so here’s my summary with responses:
… More ...Objection: “Tradition” is vague. Also, it seems to mean “do what’s already being done.” How can it act as a guide?
Response: “Tradition” is