thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb Some data points:
In my last entry I moaned and groaned a bit about how the kind of reason that enables us to live reasonably has become an archaic concept, since the principles of scientism, commercialism and bureaucracy can’t make sense of it, and in comments to an earlier entry I touched on one aspect of its … More ...
Mark Richardson makes an interesting point in his discussion of the British writer Rebecca West: she may have been a feminist socialist, but she had a much more civilized mind than you’re likely to find today. In particular, she was able to enter into, and take seriously on their own terms, the several types … More ...
This past weekend I heard quite a good talk by James Kurth about the demise of the American nation due to its own internal defects (too much liberal individualism). Anyone who wants a clear exposition of the deep roots and radical nature of the problems of liberal modernity should read three pieces he wrote setting … More ...
Or something like that. Anyway, an account of my book (which won’t be out until November) has appeared on the website of a Dutch news program, in a weblog dealing with the U.S. election. The author, Bart Jan Spruyt, is a conservative Dutch historian and journalist. If you can’t read Dutch, he says the … More ...
Is emphasis on universal human rights an unmixed good?
On the whole, their influence is no doubt to be saluted. That influence has grown in response to the political catastrophes of the past century, as well as to vastly improved communications and the consequent tendency toward worldwide unification of standards. The reasons behind it thus … More ...
Here’s another reason for the docility of the post-60s generations: they’ve had more schooling, and a study of people who quit smoking shows that educated people are more easily influenced by others.
That makes sense. The point of schooling is to hook people into the system of official attitude and belief rather than leaving … More ...
The current philosophical definition of art that I commented on in the last entry, that it’s whatever is presented as such within the “artworld,” put me in mind of a comment Steve Sailer made a few days ago, that he’s “increasingly fascinated by how unrebellious, how credulously trusting of authority the post-1960s generations have turned … More ...
I just sent in final revisions on the final proofs for my book on liberalism and what to do about it, so I’ve gone back to the more pleasant, more interesting, and very likely more productive investigation of architecture—the brick-and-mortar side of our social environment.
One thing leads to another, especially on the web, so … More ...
Columbia, a planned community in Maryland, was intended to be a suburban utopia without social divisions. It’s been fairly successful in its way: Money magazine ranks it #4 out of the top 100 places to live in the United States.
Utopia of course comes at a price. Everything that interferes with the perfect system has … More ...