thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb 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
William Buckley left some on the American Right with a residue of Anglophilia and Ivy League snobbery. Here’s something guaranteed to cure even the most stubborn case: lady nominalist leaves Yale to take Regius Chair of Divinity at Oxford. The bit about the black leather clerical attire (the lady is also an Episcopal priestess … More ...
European democracy: EU bigwigs are debating a proposed new Constitution that would definitively turn the EU into a superstate, and most Europeans have never heard of the thing.
Some recent items on the sexes:
What is the Christian attitude toward race, ethnicity and peoplehood?
Such things do not determine human worth any more than other aspects of social position do. Nonetheless, it seems important to me to recover a Christian conception of legitimate particularism. Such a conception would necessarily include some degree of ethnic identity and loyalty and therefore … More ...