thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb [The following review appeared in the Spring 2010 issue of Modern Age.]
The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West, by Lee Harris (New York: Basic Books, 2007)
What do we make of radical Islam? Of Islam in general? Of the present state of the West? It is easier not to … More ...
Here’s Hollywood’s take on the meaning of the Battle of the Bulge in 1949, four years after the shooting stopped:
(Battleground, 1949)
“We must never again let any force dedicated to … a super idea or a super anything become strong enough to impose itself … We must be smart enough and tough … More ...
In his comments on my discussion of alternate modernities, Paul Gottfried observes that in our present situation there’s no educational program, system of alliances, or political and cultural strategy that seems likely to get us out of the hole we’re in.
I agree. If we start with what I called the modern “attempt to … More ...
[The tenth in a series on inclusiveness.]
I’ve said that inclusiveness has a religious quality. To say it is a kind of religion is not to say it works well as one. Religion defines the place of man in the world, but inclusiveness reflects the modern outlook, which has difficulty dealing with such … More ...
Political modernity is based on rejection of the premodern belief that man participates in some sort of higher nature. As such, it can take several forms. Liberalism is the form that has won, but not the only one that has existed.
If we get rid of the transcendent, we might view man as fundamentally biological … More ...
Bruce Charlton has been churning out post after post on political correctness. (See his weblog entries posted November 1 through November 3.)
One of his themes is the relation between “old left” bureaucratism and “new left” hedonism. The former runs the show, the latter makes things a bit more fun for those who run it.… More ...
A discussion group I’m part of (The H. L. Mencken Club) is thinking of putting on a conference on the “conservative canon”—books that have been, or should be, central to conservatism in America.
The thought seems to be that the old booklists have become stale. Time has passed, conditions have changed, and books … More ...
Here’s a talk I gave yesterday at the annual conference of the H. L. Mencken Club.
… More ...The title of my talk is PC: The Cultural Antichrist.
It’s an odd title, but political correctness is an odd tendency. It’s a bit uncanny. It doesn’t fit in with how we normally think about things. That’s why
A reader writes to complain about the tendency of many conservatives to adopt “Islam oppresses women” as a major reason for opposing Muslim assertiveness and expansion. Doesn’t that approach (he asks) play into a feminist analysis of society, and end by supporting feminist solutions generally? And as a factual matter, can it really be true … More ...
