thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb Here is the short essay I contributed to Nikos Salingaros’ book Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction. They edited it a bit in the final version. The book is a recommended read, although I’m admittedly not neutral, and if you don’t like what I have to say in English you can also buy it in German:
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Has public discussion come to an end? Bush and his supporters want to transform the world by force to eliminate tyranny and establish freedom and democracy everywhere. The transformation of the world is to parallel the accelerated tranformation of the United States through effectively open borders. It’s not clear why any of that makes sense, … More ...
The vast resources devoted to research and education or at least schooling today seem to ensure that we’re in a position to carry on everything intelligently. That turns out not to be so. We can’t grasp the world as a whole in thought, and the assumption that we can do so through expertise divorces our … More ...
A common objection to Catholicism is that it imprisons the mind by substituting authority and dogma for free thought and inquiry. The objection restates the modern rejection of revelation and tradition as authorities, and from that point of view is important and should be answered.
One response is that experience doesn’t support the claim that … More ...
Random findings of tangential culture-war relevance: the Aztecs really did engage in torture, human sacrifice and cannibalism, just like the Spaniards said, and carbon-14 tests did not show the Shroud of Turin is a Medieval fake (the tests were botched, and it now appears the Shroud is between 1300 and 3000 years old.) The … More ...
In line with the principle of nondiscrimination with regard to sexual matters that Rocco Buttiglione supports so solidly, it appears that unemployed German women may lose unemployment benefits if they turn down jobs as prostitutes. On current public understandings it’s hard to find fault with the result. After all, sexual standards are purely personal … More ...
I had sensed something like this, so it’s interesting to see such decisive confirmation: New Survey Shows Religious Americans More Inclined to Stand Their Ground. It seems that people today are more likely to say politicians should stand by their principles on “cultural” issues. The change among church-goers since 2000 has been quite substantial, … More ...
Rocco Buttiglione acted in a more principled way than Larry Summers when he said the wrong thing, but was he principled enough? I don’t think Summers would have knuckled under to any pressure group whatever that threatened to make things difficult for him. At Stalin’s show trials the Old Bolsheviks didn’t confess simply because … More ...
How long has it been since being a college president was a respectable job? Every time one gets appointed it seems it’s because of his passionate personal embrace of “diversity.” It’s not so important what happens, as long as people from officially protected groups get as big a piece of the action as possible. Leading … More ...