thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb What happens when a black woman got stabbed to death in a small Indiana town in 1968? Just what you’d expect:
… More ...For nearly 34 years the outside world assumed that the killer was from Martinsville, with its Ku Klux Klan past, and that the police had covered up for the murderer.
Martinsville, which according to
Is liberalism politically necessary, because there’s too little agreement on basics? That’s what is said. Any attempt to enforce non-liberal views, special recognition of a particular religion for example, would be hopelessly divisive and require unacceptable coercion. Religious establishments have been in decline for a long time, and serious attempts to re-impose them today soon … More ...
Traditionalist conservatism has an air of paradox in America. It reinterprets or rejects things often identified as American in the name of understandings people find unfamiliar. After all, many would ask, haven’t Americans always idealized science, progress, material prosperity and individual success? Aren’t we a nation of immigrants from a variety of traditions? Isn’t it … More ...
Traditionalist conservatism has an air of paradox in America. It reinterprets or rejects things often identified as American in the name of understandings people find unfamiliar. After all, many would ask, haven’t Americans always idealized science, progress, material prosperity and individual success? Aren’t we a nation of immigrants from a variety of traditions? Isn’t it … More ...
This whole diversity thing doesn’t seem to be working: school in uproar after girl (apparently) uses N word in conversation with friends.
The schools are crazy about more than race, of course. Consider zero-tolerance policies in general. But how can you have common sense, which is a matter of customary understandings, if you reject all … More ...
A traditionalist is someone who accepts tradition as authoritative.
That’s not someone who believes that tradition is a good source of suggestions or an acceptable guide when no better can be had. Nor is it someone who thinks that all traditions must always be followed. It’s someone who recognizes that tradition knows more than any … More ...
Tolerance triumphs everywhere, to the point that I’m afraid of boring any remaining readers if I keep on mentioning it: Stanford rejects a football coach because they don’t like his views on homosexuality, student told to support gay rights or get an “F”, and school district sued for forcing gay propaganda.
The basic problem of American conservatism is that it appeals to tradition while refusing to accept anything but liberty, equality and universal reason as authoritative.
The refusal is of course more apparent than real, since conservatives define themselves as such by their resistance to the logical implications of liberty and equality. Nonetheless, the unwillingness or … More ...
Tolerance triumphs everywhere, to the point that I’m afraid of boring any remaining readers if I keep on mentioning it: Stanford rejects a football coach because they don’t like his views on homosexuality, student told to support gay rights or get an “F”, and
school district sued for forcing gay propaganda.
Now online: Anthony de Jasay’s The State, one of the best libertarian books. “What would you do if you were the state?”