thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb Recent changes to Canadian law greatly broaden the scope of binding arbitration. Under the new rules, if people don’t want to go to court to settle civil disputes they don’t have to, but can get a legally enforcible decision from an arbitrator. One consequence is that it is now practical of Muslims in Canada to … More ...
Evidence that there is at least one sensible European politician: Czech President Vaclav Klaus warns Europe of ‘dream world’ woes. He doesn’t like the EU, thinks the Europeans are living in lotus-land, views the Euro as a purely political scheme, believes “you cannot have a democratic accountability in anything bigger than a nation … More ...
The dialectic of the state and the family in England:
In a multicultural society, common sense gets abolished because it’s a matter of settled inarticulate understandings (a.k.a. “deeply rooted social stereotypes”). Bureaucrats must therefore run everything in accordance with their own form of rationality. There’s nothing to keep the society’s fundamental logic from getting carried to completion, so that’s what happens.
For example: in … More ...
A French parliamentary group has called for a ban on the wearing of any visible religious symbols in schools. The question had been whether Muslim girls can wear Islamic head scarves, but if that’s a problem why isn’t it a problem for a Catholic girl to wear a little silver cross? President Chirac takes the … More ...
Here’s an interesting pair of stories that illustrate how “anti-discrimination” rules originally based on claims that a distinction is utterly irrational can change fundamental standards that determine the ability of an institution to perform its core mission:
If draconian measures are needed to enforce a law, we should ask whether the public benefit justifies the penalties. A copyright bill is being introduced in the Senate that would make it a federal felony punishable by five years in prison to use a camcorder to make a copy of a film in a movie … More ...
A concrete result of the destruction by the Derrida virus and related strains of the ability to think like a normal human being: Hanging Corpse Admired as Sculpture on Campus. It was for this, it appears, that the Hungarians overthrew communism.
I find it extraordinarily illuminating to view modernism and postmodernism as collections of … More ...
Nikos Salingaros has made some fascinating material available that gives the background to an essay he wrote on “The Derrida Virus” that I mentioned a month or so ago. (The essay is no longer available on the web but it appears it will be published in Telos.) The material provides a perspective on how … More ...
A correspondent envisions a
“conservative ecumenism that would bring about a revival of Christendom, with Catholic, Orthodox, and even theologically conservative Lutherans and other Protestants finding some way to join as the reunified Body of Christ.”
I think my correspondent’s remark may have been prompted by a comment I made that
… More ...“it is important for