Culture, geopolitics and religion
Homage to the worst movie I’ve ever seen, combined with a history of the Vatican space program. How can you go wrong?
James Kalb
Democracy in America
What does it mean that the leader of the Senate Democrats plans to oppose John Roberts because of insufficient demonstrated commitment to “Democrats’ core causes, racial and gender equality”? Apparently, that (1) people, especially sexually normal white men, abuse others if left to themselves, so (2) a comprehensive system of supervision backed by force is … More ...
Sidelight on Islam (or something)
Little-known fact (to me anyway): the Iranian fertility rate is now 1.82 children/woman, well below replacement. According to the BBC, it’s plummeting in the 3rd world generally, except for sub-Saharan Africa.
A further note on Islam
Another way to make the point touched on in my last entry is that Islam is found mostly in multiethnic and multicultural societies, which in their most characteristic form become ruled by transnational bureaucracies like the Mamluks with the aid of of radically denationalized professional armies like the Janissaries or for that matter (in a … More ...
History, geography, society and Islam
The various complaints about Islam and Muslim society at View from the Right and elsewhere (aggressiveness, deviousness, honor killings, polygamy, female genital mutilation, political irrationality, organized punitive rape, etc., etc., etc.), to the extent they reflect realities, suggest a common explanation related to the circumstance that Islam appeared where it did and spread mostly by … More ...
The closing of the ring
Here’s my contribution to The Great Purge: The Deformation of the Conservative Movement Paperback , co-edited by Paul Gottfried and Richard Spencer.
The Closing of the Ring
by James Kalb
What “political correctness” means is that there are more and more topics that cannot be discussed in reputable circles, even among those who say they … More ...
Universality and nationhood
Why do some people say that America is the First Universal Nation when the Muslim Umma is already the first Universal Nation? To me it seems like a bad idea to imitate the Muslims.… More ...
More noodling about evolution
I recently touched on the ambiguity of “random variation” as one of the basic principles of evolution. The word “random” appears to be something of a placeholder. From the point of view of any science, it seems that random events are simply events the science doesn’t try to explain that follow a normal distribution or … More ...
A poetickal diversion
Here’s a poem I’ve always been fond of that’s not my favorite but I was thinking about it today:
… More ...An Immorality (Ezra Pound)
Sing we for love and idleness,
Naught else is worth the having.
Though I have been in many a land,
There is naught else in living.
And I would rather have my
Amateur noodling about evolution
I’ve never put much effort into sorting out the dispute over evolution and intelligent design, partly because it would take too much work and partly because I really don’t understand why, rationally speaking, there’s such an issue. Still, the Cardinal Schönborn situation got me thinking a little about claims that science of necessity is “naturalistic”—it … More ...