thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb I’ve been reading the first couple of chapters of Wilhelm Roepke’s A Humane Economy, and they call up mixed feelings.
The book is generally a good one. It’s an attempt to place free-market economics in a civilizational setting. That setting is classical bourgeois society, especially as it existed in European villages and small towns … More ...
Something minor can sum up a situation. An example is a recent comment by George Will (referenced by Lawrence Auster) to the effect that America is founded on John Locke, not Jesus Christ, so America is not a Christian country and it’s illegitimate to disfavor Muslim immigration.
There we have the whole of what … More ...
Here’s another way of putting a point I made in my last entry: we understand things by seeing them in a setting. We also need to have some sort of general understanding of the world at large to orient our lives and thought as a whole. That understanding can’t involve an infinite series of ever … More ...
Charles Murray has an interview at the Gene Expression weblog in which he mentions that he has been an agnostic since his teens but is growing more and more inclined to thoughts of God as he grows older. His case is common enough to be worth comment. Why is it that once men pass adolescence … More ...
On the face of it, these pro-homosexualists who don’t like “prejudice” have a point: Mixed message, and Two speeches, two days apart. If it’s true, as the Pope supposedly said, that we should all strive to “overcome preconceived ideas and prejudices, tear down barriers and eliminate contrasts that divide … so as to … More ...
Here’s another pre-9/11 goldie oldie, this one from the well-placed and highly-regarded Anthony Lewis, in the March 12, 1993 New York Times:
… More ...The murder of a doctor in Pensacola, Fla., tells us the essential truth about most anti-abortion activists. They are religious fanatics, who want to impose their version of God’s word on the
There’s definitely been a bump up in aggressively anti-religious agitation in the years since September 11. If you look back though there’s been no real change in the beliefs of those who consider themselves entitled to determine the order of our public life. Here, for example, is the terminally prominent and mainstream Arthur M. Schlesinger, … More ...
Merry Christmas from Turnabout!
Does anyone know what “reconciliation” means in church-speak? Dr. Schori, the Episcopal Presiding Bishop, uses it quite a lot, and calls it the mission of her church, but you never see a clear definition.
So far as I can tell, the word refers to a state of affairs in which everybody remains as much … More ...
As my previous entry suggests, liberal and libertarian thought is oddly rigid and one-dimensional. Everything is what it is, without regard to anything else, Many things follow from that atomizing view of reality. In the ethical realm, for example, it follows that wills are either coincident or opposed, and the only way to deal with … More ...