thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb A blogger who combines the practice of medicine with Catholicism and Austrian economics comments on my views and repeats some of the mistakes people make when they think about tradition. They’re common mistakes, so a response seems in order even though no doubt it’s all been said before.
He seems to think that saying “tradition … More ...
I’ve been reading Moral Mazes, an account of life in the corporate management suite by sociologist Robert Jackall. At bottom, it’s a description of life at court. The desires of the powerful are what matter, responsibility exists to be shifted, an Act of God (recession, change in management, public relations issue, whatever) might change … More ...
Tradition makes us what we are. The institutions that are dominant today want to make us more manageable as human resources, so they destroy all traditions but those of consumerist careerism. The latter, of course, include pluralism and inclusiveness.
People usually don’t like it when things that are close to them are attacked for … More ...
The untutored or perhaps commonsense view is that there’s something out of order about certain sexual acts. They’re “unnatural,” as people once said, or “intrinsically disordered,” as the Church says today.
Nowadays of course educated people think that’s all ridiculous. After all, no one says sodomy or whatnot is miraculous, so it evidently complies with … More ...
Paul Gottfried has some comments on my post on shrinks and hipster liberalism that raise several interesting points: is the social outlook found among the modish half-educated young an organic development or an intentional construction? Can we can do something about it and the broader stream of advanced liberalism of which it is part? And … More ...
[The ninth in a series on inclusiveness.]
Western societies treat liberal ideals of freedom, equality, diversity, tolerance, and inclusiveness as uniquely authoritative. Those ideals increasingly trump all other considerations and silence all criticism.
As a practical matter, they mean rule by experts, bureaucrats, and commercial interests that promise to give everyone what he wants, … More ...
[The eighth in a series on inclusiveness.]
What’s it like to live in a modern, diverse, tolerant, vibrant, inclusive, multicultural society? Everyday experience in early twenty-first century America is enough to sketch the situation in bold strokes.
Growing up absurd
Such a society lacks sustaining stories, symbols, and models of a good life, and … More ...
[The seventh in a series on inclusiveness.]
The Catholic view of the world has lasted a long time and supported many good things, so the Catholic view of antidiscrimination and inclusiveness ought to matter to anyone interested in those topics.
But what is “the Catholic view”? The phrase can refer to anything from the … More ...
While doing a Google search I ran into an abstract of a 2007 scholarly article by three French psychiatrists whose English title is “New society, new families: a new basic personality? From the neurotic to the narcissistic-hedonistic personality.”
The basic thought is that changes in education, family structure, social attitudes, and so on have led … More ...
[The sixth in a series on inclusiveness.]
A common leftist claim is that established social and moral principles serve the interests of the ruling classes. The claim isn’t applied to principles of which the left approves. In particular, it’s not applied to inclusiveness. That’s unfortunate, because it’s obvious that inclusiveness serves governing elites by … More ...