thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb The discussion of the once and future paleoconservatism continues at Taki’s Magazine, with contributions from Daniel Larison and Richard Spencer. Larison seems to think that the new will be much the same as the old, while Spencer seems to identify with a sort of rambunctuous and generally nationalist individualism that perhaps can fuel … More ...
Paul Gottfried says the paleo movement is dead, and calls for youth to take over in the form of a post-paleo movement based on true American conservatism, which is the constitutional liberalism once represented by Taft Republicanism. He sees signs of such a development in the Ron Paul campaign, and in the writings of … More ...
When people complain about stupidity they mean that someone is willfully ignoring—or mindlessly oblivious to—the obvious. Whether something is obvious depends on your general understanding of things. So to say something is stupid, when it’s something other people insist on, is to say that (1) it’s based on an understanding you reject, and (2) there’s … More ...
Recent claims that Christianists are taking over are usually no more than expressions of shock that general cultural Christianity is taking a while to fall apart completely, but this, this, and this, on the growing influence of evangelical Christianity in the military, seems different. An effective imperial army needs a soldiers’ religion—the … More ...
Is one motive for our rulers’ aversion to immigration restrictions the thought that if you have them that suggests there’s a particular people to whom you have special obligations and that has the right to tell you what to do? If you have easy immigration it seems clear that you’re not subordinated to anybody in … More ...
We’ve seen that multicultural society is brutish and irrational because accepted concepts of what life is about don’t begin to do it justice. So how can reason, civilization, and other good things be restored?
To some extent we can try to be reasonable and civilized ourselves and hope it catches on. That’s hard, though—man is … More ...
Basically, it’s nonexistent. As suggested in my last post, in order to reason about things we need to be able to identify them. We need to sort out experience and apply concepts to it that tell us what things are and what they mean. The problem is that the ability to do so depends on … More ...
Reason, I suppose, is the ability to form reliable judgements about the world and what we should do. As such, it involves a great many things:
In the absence of an explicit common understanding of what a good life is, and in the face of a government that has taken on responsibility for the whole of human life, from the rearing of children to the relations between the sexes to the validity of communal loyalties, the people responsible for persuading us … More ...
Medieval history has its striking themes and incidents. Beyond that, it’s fascinating for us today, or at least for me today, because it’s the source of the modern Western world, so it’s infinitely close—our modern thoughts and institutions can all be traced back there—but it’s also infinitely far away.
Maybe something like that could be … More ...