Little-known fact
Little known to me, anyway: it turns out that Anna Leonowens of King and I fame was Boris Karloff’s great aunt.… More ...
James Kalb
Life, law and the world
While I was preparing to give a talk about law, I did a little reading on the philosophy of law. One thing that struck me was what might be called the “external” point of view taken in current thought on the subject.
Here’s a quote from Blackstone:
… More ...This law of nature, being co-eval with mankind
Dates and crusades
A fascinating story: someone is said to have sprouted a date seed unearthed at Masada, from a date eaten during the siege there almost 2,000 years ago. It appears that 500-year-old seeds had been sprouted in England, and 1200-year old seeds in China, but this would be the first 2,000-year-old seed.
The dates of ancient … More ...
Moral panic
I had run into “moral panic” in British publications, as a term used to debunk traditionalist concerns about various initiatives of the cultural Left, and decided to look it up in Wikipedia:
… More ...A moral panic is a mass movement based on the perception that some individual or group, frequently a minority group or a
Lefties and virtues
In an email discussion a Lefty said:
… More ...The religious right believes promiscuity is bad because the Supreme Being and Creator of the Universe doesn’t like it, never has and never will. The left believes it’s good or bad depending on the consequences on this earth, in this lifetime, and those are going to change over
Wait until times change and people can look back
He was an admirable man, but why not leave the judgment of history to the passage of time? Rushing into these things has a bullying quality: Petition Declaring That Pope John Paul II Should By Public Acclamation Be Known Henceforth and Forever As John Paul the Great.
How words become reality
Not surprisingly, people who believe that gender is socially constructed think the same of truth. Here’s a report that touches on both points: APA Study Says: “Who Needs Dad?” There’s nothing very complicated about the situation. If you want something to count as true, in judicial proceedings for example, you just generate a lot … More ...
Less is more
Since Vatican II the updated Church has fallen into the unfortunate updated habit of churning out an ever-increasing flood of words and events. That rather misses the point, it always seemed to me. Didn’t people use to talk about a “small still voice” and that sort of thing in connection with religion? So it’s a … More ...
Terrifying religious tyranny
Here’s a list of Benedicts’s deeds of terror while Grand Inquisitor: Timeline of principal doctrinal decisions, documents, 1981-2005.
It’s worth a look. Every 6 or 8 years he’d say some book or theologian isn’t Catholic. Once he excommunicated a leftwing theologian, and a couple of times he did the same to a rightwing archbishop. … More ...
Untergang des Abendlandes, English version
An English lady Catholic theologian, a convert from the C of E, once forced me to read John Robinson’s Honest to God, saying it was the book that ended Anglicanism over there. The English clergy read it, she said, and they all abandoned the faith.
After reading the thing I found her story despiriting … More ...