thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb In the first favorable sign recently in the continuing scandal involving homosexual predators among the Roman Catholic clergy, eight American bishops have called on their brethren to convene a plenary council to discuss the “root causes” of the current crisis.
This would be the first American plenary council in more than 100 years. According to … More ...
We’ve commented how the combination of management by concept and the diversity imperative has given rise to mandatory sexual revisionism for those who want to work for large companies. Since the cases we commented on were British, it might be worth mentioning one from America: Motorola “homophobia” workshops, other activism creating tension in workplace.… More ...
For another example of how complicated diversity and antiracism make things, here’s something by an Asian woman born in Uganda and now living in London: Racism and the truth about the Ugandan Asians. Say what you like, she’s a woman of principle. The first principle is that everything is really something else. The second … More ...
Canada continues to push the frontiers of PC forward: An Ontario judge has given a man a lighter sentence than even his own lawyer asked for in recognition of the man’s aboriginal heritage. The Supreme Court of Canada, abandoning even the pretence of doing justice as traditionally conceived, has said that sentences for aboriginal offenders … More ...
Boys who are abused are much more likely to become violent criminals if they have one version of a gene associated with chemical balances in the brain than another: Bad behaviour linked to gene. In principle, the finding is not particularly startling. Common sense has always told us that background and temperament account for … More ...
Rights grow ever more equal: a man pulled a knife on his wife, their pit bull attacked him, and he stabbed the dog to death. Result: 90 days for the attack on the woman, 2 years for the attack on the dog. The sentences run concurrently, so the assault on his wife was a … More ...
Scandinavian social democracy keeps rolling on: Norway sets 40% female quota for boardrooms. Publicly-owned companies have to comply in one year, privately-owned ones in three. The quotas expand the 40% rule for government posts that has existed since the Norwegians got their first female prime minister in 1981, a lady who has since become … More ...
For those interested, First Things has published a useful rebuttal of the factual basis of Daniel Goldhagen’s notorious essay in The New Republic, “What Would Jesus Have Done?” [The Goldhagen essay is not available on-line.] The author’s final point seems well founded: “The New Republic owed its readers, and more importantly the Catholic … More ...
It may be true—I believe it is—that American society is mostly good, if only because no society could last a day that wasn’t mostly good. Still, if that’s true then it must be possible for a society that’s mostly good to be pointed in a radically wrong direction and to adopt a fundamentally evil system … More ...
Autonomy means “self-rule,” and liberalism makes it the supreme political goal. The coherence of classical liberalism depends on its ability to find a meaning of autonomy that promotes discipline and small government. On the face of it, that should be easy. After all, ruling yourself is a discipline, and external government is its negation. The … More ...