thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb The culture of therapy calls for some explanation, and there’s a new book out in England that claims it’s the natural consequence of the collapse of the Left. The Left claimed that everyone could get what he wants through social engineering. That turned out to be impossible, so a whole industry has grown up … More ...
The Queen of England has decided she needs to investigate the stuff Tony Blair’s been telling her about the proposed EU constitution: Queen raises fears over EU constitution. It seems she’s concerned about the effect of Article 10, which gives EU law primacy over the law of member states, on her position as sovereign. … More ...
Wendy McElroy gives some startling statistics on the decline of marriage in her piece on The Marriage Strike (by men who don’t much like what current family law has to offer them). During the first half of the ’90s the marriage rate dropped from 9.8 to 7.6—I had no idea there had been such a … More ...
I’m not impressed by the argument that America is good because it’s free, equal, democratic and prosperous, or because a lot of people from all over the world want to move here. There are good things to be said about America on those grounds, but they can also be said about other Western countries, and … More ...
Statements in a radio interview given by Anglican bishop Martin Reynolds display the essentials of liberal antihomophobia: Anti-gay archbishop Jensen likened to Hitler. According to Reynolds, the claim that deviant sexual intercourse is bad, so homosexual couplings aren’t equivalent to marriages and those who affirm such things in their lives shouldn’t be pastors of … More ...
In spite of hate speech laws the mainstream press is probably a bit freer and more diverse in Britain than America. Here, for example, is a reasonably straightforward article on reparative therapy for homosexual orientation—something you’re not likely to see in the national press here. For those who pursue it, more often than not … More ...
For another example of what looks like a gathering counterattack against technocracy by actual scientists, see Understanding the Derrida virus by the physicist, mathematician, and architectural theorist Nikos Salingaros. (I’m in the acknowledgements, which rightly suggests that I have a great deal of sympathy for what Professor Salingaros has to say.)
A summary of recent research, Hardwired to Connect, shows that even if you put all this stuff about traditional morality and spiritual values to one side, and just look at biochemistry, children still need something very like the authority of family and local religious institutions. It’s useful to keep these things in your back … More ...
Conservatives can be divided into (1) pessimists, who think the trend is down, down, down, and (1) optimists, who think things aren’t so bad. The pessimists point to things like Grutter, Lawrence, and the business-as-usual attitude of most mainstream conservatives to those decisions. The optimists point to things like practical limitations on the … More ...
Here are some extremely interesting observations by a Lutheran observer at Vatican II. From what the man says it appears that the bishops got to Rome without any particularly pressing concerns of their own to deal with, they were asked to pass on grand issues for which they weren’t prepared, the experts argued rings around … More ...