thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb Why so much bad religious art, architecture, music, ceremony and whatnot? Iconoclasm has always rested on theological error, and a Florentine scholar tells us that the same is true today: The New Iconoclasts Have Theology Degrees. The problem the article points to, in its Italian philosophical way, is the modern view that reduces the … More ...
How to recognize a society in terminal decline: read what Juergen Habermas says in his call for renewal. According to the philosopher, whom many consider the leading German public intellectual, the renewal would be based on
… More ...“five attributes … Europeans share: the neutrality of authority, embodied in the separation of church and state, trust
This is bloody, sordid and freakish, but it suggests the logic of the principles now accepted: transvestite murder treated as hate crime. A man paid a prostitute for services and killed the prostitute when he found out it was a man. A representative of something called the “gay and lesbian liaison unit” at the … More ...
This looks bad: New York Times radio station fires announcer over off-air remark. Gregg Whiteside had worked for WQXR 25 years and was their main classical music announcer. He made a comment (reportedly antisemitic) in a private conversation with a colleague and friend. Someone overheard the comment and reported it, and they fired him … More ...
The ever-useful Keith Windshuttle has collected a remarkable collection of stupid, wrong-headed, and sometimes downright evil responses from intellectuals to September 11. To my mind the most outrageous case he recounts (pointed out by PC Watch) is the following:
… More ...There were some academics who, in the heat of the moment, overlooked the prevailing politically correct
The march of equal opportunity: Firms plan gay audit to avoid discrimination claims. Some big English companies are rushing to find how which employees are homosexual before laws go into effect that could expose them to huge liabilities if it they are found to have discriminated.
The problem, of course, is that employers can’t … More ...
List-keepers are one thing that makes Freerepublic sometimes useful. Here, for example, is a list of links relating to the homosexual agenda. It should always be possible to find the most recent version of the list through “scripter,” the member who maintains it.
The Bush adminstration has warned colleges about campus speech codes, and David Limbaugh says “hurrah!”
What ever happened to the conservative ideal of self-governing institutions? The speech codes I know about are bad, but they wouldn’t be such a problem if the civil rights laws hadn’t imposed affirmative action and so forced a regime of … More ...
The International Organizations Research Group, the new research arm of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), has released its first report, The United Nations Children’s Fund: Women or Children First? (available in full in *.pdf).
Unfortunately, it’s feminists and not women or children who come first at UNICEF today. … More ...
Human relations are particular. I form connections to X, Y and Z based on their (and my) goals, qualities and situations. Such things vary endlessly, so human relations vary endlessly as well, in ways that can’t be controlled or even defined in any comprehensive way.
Liberals believe in nondiscrimination and inclusion. Nondiscrimination and inclusion forbid … More ...