thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb Actually, it seems the book might be worth reading as a brief guided tour of certain sorts of contemporary intellectual manipulation: Pooh-poohing postmodernism (on Postmodern Pooh, a long delayed sequel by Frederick Crews to his Pooh Perplex, a 1964 take-off on the schools of literary criticism then current). The man spent two years… More ...
One wonders when and how the EU fantasy will collapse. Even today, some seem dubious about the basic principle of managerial universalism, and if they’re French they sometimes say so: ‘Asiatic’ Turkey is threat to EU, warns Giscard. Among many interesting features of the article, note the response of the right-wing reporter (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard) … More ...
The author pours a huge amount of material into The Politics of Family Destruction, an account of what he calls “the divorce industry.” Even though I include links to a lot of men’s rights groups (which are largely concerned with the treatment of men by family courts) in my anti-feminist page, I don’t … More ...
A bit of an oddity: “Women Exploiting Women”. The name of the article is uninformative, but the details are fascinating and I wish there were more of them. It seems that several successful professional women in Northern California took it into their heads to set up a pyramid scheme based on big payoffs, birthday … More ...
Rounding out the conception of “human rights” in a part of the world in which you can be criminally prosecuted for racism if you call Islam “the stupidest religion,” U.K prisoners have won their claim that hardcore porn is a human right. It’s all part of their right to “receive information,” you see. So … More ...
Conservatives complain very forcefully, but aren’t as good at saying what they want. Unless we can say what we want, however, it will be hard to make clear to others or even ourselves what we’re doing or why anyone should go along with it. So here, for comment, is an initial sketch of an answer … More ...
If you want to keep your finger on the pulse of the European left, here’s a piece worth reading: Florence builds a bridge to a brave new social paradise. Say what you want about postmodern irony, simple faith is still whole and entire. People can’t live without it.
Traditionalists see limits to the regenerative qualities of capitalism, but it’s still got advantages over the politically-correct welfare state. A reader sends an instance from Down Under: Work aid better than welfare, according to aboriginal leader Pearson.
Here’s a link to a couple of comments I made at another blog I maintain in which I bring back the theory of contemporary advanced liberalism as a gnostic heresy. I suppose it’s not exactly gnosticism, though. The gnostics (it is said) believed this world is evil, while liberals as liberals believe only that it … More ...
Now there’s a title that should make this entry even more crowd-pleasing than others I’ve posted recently. Still, I feel the need to mull over some basics, and those who get bored can skip entries.
Anyway, “essentialism” is considered a big sin among a lot of educated and intelligent people today. It seems to be … More ...