thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb 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 ...
There are some good comments on daycare at the Touchstone magazine blog that were touched off by a Rich Lowry comment on a new book. It’s an issue that should get more attention. The goal of modern public life is the abolition of the social function of every social institution other than bureaucracy and the … More ...
This Salon article, by a young Episcopal priestess educated at Yale Divinity School, helps fill in the background to the Gene Robinson affair: So A Priest Walks Into A Bar. She’s coy and she tries to be cute, but she presents an attitude rather clearly:
… More ...But of course these men don’t want to
Sam Francis has a good review of Paul Gottfried’s Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt, a sequel to his After Liberalism. Or at least it seems good to me. I haven’t read the book, but I’ve read some of Gottfried’s other writings on the subject, and have some idea of what his views … More ...
We were told that if we’d be rational about sex, get rid of moralistic hang-ups, and accept individual differences, then joy, health and freedom would reign. Apparently, that hasn’t happened: New Anglican Sex Scandal. A number of women are claiming that they were terribly damaged by sexual contact with Anglican clergymen who were either … More ...
Thoughts on reading Veritatis Splendor:
The attitude that puts social justice at the center of moral life is anti-Catholic.
One of the special strengths of Catholic Christianity is that it deals unflinchingly with the problem of evil. The visible focus of every Catholic church is the Crucifixion—God abandoned and tortured to death. The point of the image would be lost … More ...
“Mainstream” has become the term for things that don’t seriously oppose contemporary advanced liberalism. The current situation regarding “gay rights” shows that there’s some point to the expression: advanced liberalism dominates public discussion so thoroughly today that you really do have to go out on a limb to oppose its most radical demands.
That situation … More ...