thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb An interesting article on press coverage of partial-birth abortion: Abortion: partial truths. There’s a ferocious national debate, the factual claims of the two sides are radically opposed, and it takes fifteen months for anybody in the mainstream press to call a local clinic and try to find out what’s going on.
What’s behind this … More ...
One year to the day after the attacks the Justice Department gets on the case, fingerprinting and photographing high-risk visitors. The security system will target nationals of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria. Makes sense—fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudis, so it would be grossly simple-minded to check them out. And Shiite non-Arab … More ...
More signs that everyone’s got to get on board with “human rights”: Activists win in fight to get human rights cases tried in U.S. and Corporate responsibility and human rights: A fact sheet. The practical result of the principle that everyone in the world can force anyone in the world to comply with human … More ...
I’m OK you’re OK as theology: Catholics reject evangelization of Jews. According to the journalist at the Boston Glob, who plainly has some axes to grind, “the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops declared unequivocally that the biblical covenant between Jews and God is valid and therefore Jews do not need to be … More ...
Wonders of diversity, chapter umpteen: Bangladeshi man beaten to death by mob of Dominican bike thieves for calling 911. It happened right here in Brooklyn, although East New York is a long way away. Query: if a nonwhite mob kills a nonwhite and race is evidently an issue, is it a lynching? Or is … More ...
This is puzzling: Nicholas Kristof has told us that those who question CEDAW must favor abuse of women in Pakistan because “frankly, the treaty has almost nothing to do with American women … it has everything to do with the half of the globe where to be female is to be persecuted until, often, death.” … More ...
Here’s an account of the effects of immigration on Britain and some reader responses. Can anything be more stupid than claims there are no real problems here, and that immigration opponents are simply anti-immigrant xenophobes who need to be re-educated to celebrate diversity?
A rare critical look at “human rights”: a review of The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, Kirsten Sellars, Sutton Publishing, 2002, which (it appears) treats human rights as an unprincipled attempt to rule the world in the name of principle. “[H]uman rights have not just been on the rise: they have also … More ...
The death of common sense is inevitable in a society in which “deeply rooted social stereotype” is a term of abuse, and it takes many forms. Here’s one: Playground squabbles, the total control of children’s play to ensure total safety. When you walk by New York playgrounds today it’s hard to miss how stupid … More ...
How a minor altercation becomes a hate crime: take a blue-collar neighborhood dispute that starts with insults and ends with shoving and punching but no-one hurt. Make one party an ex-con who had gone straight, the other a homosexual. Let them call each other “drug dealer” and “faggot.” Result: since homosexuals are a protected class, … More ...