thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb You don’t have to like Thomas Friedman to find something interesting in his account of Iran’s Third Wave. Six hundred years ago Ibn Khaldun noted that ideological governments last 30 years, and there’s no reason modern Iran should be different. Presumably something of the sort will apply to other brands of radical Islam as … More ...
If the bishops want to step up and take responsibility for what they do, why did they adopt their new guidelines by secret ballot?
So far as I can tell, they’re still mostly intested in damage control. That would explain why they chose to be addressed by two liberals and some victims—people they knew wouldn’t … More ...
View from the mainstream: Group Says Course Training Still Breaks Along Sex Lines. If girls choose cosmetology and boys plumbing it’s plain common sense that something’s got to be done. And the law by and large backs that up.
And to find out what “diversity” means among those accepted as spokesmen for women, look … More ...
A couple of years ago I wrote an essay on The Tyranny of Liberalism. Now I have a sequel that I’m revising because it didn’t get published where I wanted. I thought I’d post it here to see if anyone finds it interesting enough to comment:
FURTHER THOUGHTS ON LIBERAL TYRANNY
by James Kalb… More ...
No big surprise: Sex-Ed Programs Not Cutting Risky Behavior. Sex is a matter of what life is and what we are as men and women, not “giving young people the information they need to make responsible choices.” Sex education is an attempted techno-fix for a basic human condition. As such the only surprise is … More ...
Will proceedings in the International Criminal Court preserve even the appearance of judicial decency? It’s hard to create something as evanescent as judiciousness in an institution without a network of relationships, expectations and traditions to support it, and such things seem lacking in the case of the ICC. “World society” is somewhat of a fiction, … More ...
The theory that EU expansion is the solution to popular concern in Europe about job security and crime isn’t Jack Straw’s personal fantasy. Others share it too. Possible bases for the theory include:
Immigration hits Anytown, USA: New ethnic patchwork frays community bonds. It’s not clear why one would choose for this to happen.
Good news of a minor sort: British Columbia actually did shut down its human rights commission, although (as suggested in our earlier notice) something equally bad is presumably in the works.
Money, the Internet and homosexuality: it all comes together in the electronic world market of everything. Untapped Webizens: Seeking Out the Gay and Lesbian Market deals with the personal importance of the internet to homosexuals, and the importance of both to sellers of expensive cutting-edge consumer goods.