thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb The Left continues all-victorious because the serious issues were conceded long ago. “Inclusiveness” and “tolerance,” taken seriously, radically weaken all institutions other than universal markets and universal rational bureaucracies. Nonetheless, it is now fundamental that they are necessary basic standards for any tolerable society. Rejecting them has become unspeakable, and for most people unthinkable; all … More ...
There’s a deep connection between PC liberalism and Nazism. A single movement of thought, the abolition of the transcendent, leads to them as its two ultimate possibilities. Nazism therefore clarifies to liberals their understanding of what the alternative to their view really is, within the world of thought they inhabit, by perfectly displaying that alternative.… More ...
More on the mantra about the absence of any relation between homosexuality and pedophilia.
I’m not sure it was worth the effort putting Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi together for the joint exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. Maybe the thought was that neither is worth a major exhibit alone, but if you put them together Orazio provides artistry and Artemisia notoriety and then you’ve got something.
It’s not that Artemisia … More ...
Does it make sense to talk of PC liberalism as a grand conceptual system that’s inevitable because of something in modern thought? Isn’t it just the way things happen to have turned out? For example, some people view multiculturalism as Hitler’s bequest to us—if there had been no Nazis, they say, there would have been … More ...
Some conventional wisdom on the scandals in the Catholic Church: Church Itself Sowed Seeds of Scandal. It’s by a man named Oliver McTernan who ought to know what that wisdom is—after 30 years in active ministry promoting social justice he’s now an associate at the Harvard Center for International Affairs.
… More ...“The other [image of
Since homosexuality is a topic these days I thought I’d sketch some objections to it:
Toward a Newer Right: the Right has always been a response to the Left, an attempt to maintain traditional affirmations in the face of leftist negations. As a result the Right, although essentially positive because it wanted to preserve something, has appeared negative because its main activity has been opposing leftist initiatives.
Sorry for continuing with the topic of sexual abnormality, but it’s one the world is presenting to us just now. Also, it’s difficult to analyze adequately and so has some intellectual interest. Here’s a worthwhile article, “The paradox of the postmodern pedophile”—all other aspects of normality are being defined out of existence, so why … More ...
Hegelian-sounding aphorism of the day:
Leftism asserts the negation; liberalism negates the assertion.
Thus, the Left is communist and wants to destroy the heritage of the past. It asserts that the past must be negated. Liberals, on the other hand, are anti-anti-communist and simply deny that the heritage of the past should be asserted.
Why … More ...