thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist, provides a textbook example of human rights advocacy: Women’s Rights: Why Not?. He details particular horrendous abuses, claims that’s all “human rights” is about, and attacks people for even raising questions. It annoys him that the Justice Department is examining the legal effect of American adherence … More ...
One example among many of how tolerance works: Baptist Pastor Attacks Islam, Inciting Cries of Intolerance. A past president of the Southern Baptist Convention called Muhammad a “demon-possessed pedophile” (he apparently consummated his 12th and final marriage when the lady was 9 years old), and declared that Muslims worshiped a different God than Christians. … More ...
In America today traditionalist conservatism seems quite radical. It rejects technocracy and egalitarian hedonism—the central tenets of current political and moral discussion—together with ideals like inclusiveness and institutions like the modern managerial state that flow from them. It calls, in fact, for absolutely fundamental changes in the public order and the beliefs that motivate it.… More ...
There’s no reason the logic shouldn’t play out, so I imagine the researcher’s interpretation would be the normal one among social scientists today: Study Examines Homophobia In The Workplace. The “homophobia” was a tendency among both men and women to view an unwanted sexual advance from a man to a man as more serious … More ...
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 ...