thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb There’s something terribly wrong with Arab public life. I’ve liked most of the Arabs I’ve met—better, in fact, than most Israelis. Whatever human weaknesses and vices the Arabs have though they seem to turn into political theories. It has nothing to do with intelligence or education. Here, for example, are the comments of the Chairman … More ...
A possible exchange:
… More ...Alter: So why do you say there’s a liberal tyranny in America today? So far as I can see you can pretty much do or say what you want.
Ego: But am I free to live the way someone ought to live?
Alter: What do you mean? Whatever you
Do the best things always come first? Every movement seems to produce its classics at the beginning like Athena springing full-grown from the head of Zeus. (Sorry if that’s too high-flown!)
That applies to modernity too. For us the seventeenth century is the century of genius, because it was when modernity achieved full development in … More ...
What kind of conservatism is needed today? Whatever it is will have to be different from that of the past. Conservatism as such is simply the desire to keep what’s good in an existing way of life. Conservatives today, however, have seen liberalism transform the world they once loved beyond recognition. What can there … More ...
What kind of conservatism is needed today? Whatever it is will have to be complicated, or at least different from that of the past. Conservatism as such is simply the desire to keep what’s good in an existing way of life. Conservatives today, however, have seen liberalism transform the world they once loved beyond recognition… More ...
Apparently, Le Pen said on one occasion:
… More ...Do you want me to say it is a revealed truth that everyone has to believe? That it’s a moral obligation? I say there are historians who are debating these questions. I am not saying that the gas chambers did not exist. I couldn’t see them myself. I
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 ...