thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb 
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 ...
I’m revising the lecture mentioned in the last entry for another conference. Here’s a *.pdf of the current draft. Basically, I’m abbreviating the first part (scientism and liberalism are bad, tradition and Catholicism are good) and expanding the second (what do we do about it). I intend to do more, and any comments would be … More ...
I gave a talk about reason, scientism and liberalism at a recent conference put on by the Roman Forum. Here’s a *.pdf of the talk’s written form.
Here are the Pope’s remarks to reporters on the papal plane on his way to the United States that became an issue in a recent entry :
… More ...Beltramo: I’ll ask the question in Italian, but we would love to have just a greeting in Spanish. With the enormous growth in the Hispanic presence, the Catholic
One issue raised by Brooks’s “bobos” (bourgeois bohemians, his new hip yuppie ruling class) is how long they’ll last in power. They do have some advantages:
I continue my investigation of current ideals of life, with Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There by David Brooks and Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter. (The former author is the NYT columnist, the latter a couple of youngish socialist Canadian … More ...