thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb Here’s something I wrote for a local newspaper a few years back. It didn’t get published then, so I thought I’d give it a second chance now:
… More ...Senator Moynihan noted not long ago [in The Public Interest] that in 1943 there were 73,000 persons on relief in New York City. In that year there
There’s always be a … whatever: an English university forbids flying the English flag.
Confirmation of the view of California Attorney General Bill Lockyer that prison rape is common, white men are targeted, and law enforcement officials act as if it’s OK: Human Rights Watch on male rape in US prisons.
What would be necessary for the rebirth of traditional society?
Traditional society is society oriented toward transcendent good. To say a good—the good life, say—has a transcendent element is to say we can’t make what it is altogether explicit or know it sufficiently on our own. If that is so, however, we must rely on … More ...
What would be necessary for the rebirth of traditional society?
Traditional society is society oriented toward transcendent good. The two are inseparable. To say a good—the good life, say—has a transcendent element is to say we can’t make what it is altogether explicit or know it sufficiently on our own. If that is so, however, … More ...
A liberal might object that my complaints about liberal intolerance and tyranny are really only complaints that liberalism is the political outlook on which Western institutions are now based. As such, it does what any dominant outlook does: it defines itself as truth and other outlooks as deceit, malice or ignorance, and then acts accordingly. … More ...
Evidently a book to read if you want a closeup view of malfunctions built into advanced liberalism: Coloring the News, by William McGowan. Nat Hentoff, the reviewer, doesn’t see it that way of course. He thinks of inclusiveness as incomplete rather than self-contradictory, even though pursuing any goal—even “inclusiveness”—requires that many things be excluded.
Religion leads to violence. Dogma divides, experience unites. We hear such things all the time, but are they true?
The answer isn’t obvious. There have been religious wars and persecutions, but also non-religious and anti-religious ones. It was secular ideologies, after all, that led to the political catastrophes of the last century, and the most … More ...
It’s not just the unabomber and the guy who killed Fortuyn: environmentalist terrorism is real.
More adventures with the N word: in Idaho, you can go to jail for saying it. Not up to the Dutch standard, but getting close!