thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb 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
My comments (here) on a recent story in the New York Times led someone with a job in the media to protest against right-wing conspiracy theories about his profession. My (somewhat edited) response:
… More ...I have no doubt that from inside the media the notion of a “liberal media conspiracy” seems rather silly. What
More blessings of diversity in the Anglophone world:
Someone with some knowledge of the dispute over the proposed NYC parent councils read what I wrote about it and protested that I had misread a reasonably objective report by the New York Times as a partisan political statement. My (somewhat edited) response:
… More ...Thanks for the note! It’s a useful reality check to get comments