thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb My answer is no, at least if conservatism is to be more than the view of a few comfortable intellectuals. “Conservatism” can mean many things, but it always involves a sense that in the most basic ways life can’t be understood or controlled. At bottom, we have to accept and cooperate with things as they … More ...
At times the distinction between moderate and paleo conservatism seems too ill-defined and polemical to be useful for analysis. Still, there’s something important in it worth discussing. At bottom, it’s the distinction between conservatism as a pure principle of caution, so there’s no limit to what can be negotiated or naturalized as part of the … More ...
From a traditionalist conservative point of view, the modern world looks doomed. Its insistence on rooting out all social institutions not based on free-floating choice and formalized expertise—that’s what “inclusiveness,” its highest moral principle, is all about—leaves no place for the settled informal connections and understandings that make possible decent human relations or even ordinary … More ...
I’m back from a couple of weeks away, and mostly recovered from a mild but annoying virus, so I’ll be posting once again. To get things started, here are some comments I posted on Dawn Eden’s weblog on why I think there’s a problem with contraception.
As I see it now (my view hasn’t always … More ...
For a variety of reasons I will not be posting much if at all until the new year. So Merry Christmas to all, and I’ll be back in January!
In the ’60s we had the “television generation,” the first generation to grow up watching TV. Today we have the “Internet generation.” The change in ways of finding out about the world ought to mean something, even though the effects are diffuse and so hard to interpret. Still, other people have theories on the subject, … More ...
Over at MarriageDebate.com Maggie Gallagher has been dealing with one of the standard arguments for “gay marriage,” that there can’t be an essential connection between marriage and procreation because after all 70-year-old women are allowed to marry even though they can’t have babies. Miss Gallagher handles the question very well, but there’s a lurking point … More ...
I just finished reading Rene Guenon’s The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times. It’s an interesting display, by the French Traditionalist metaphysician (and mathematician), of what can be done through systematic application of simple concepts.
In Guenon’s system, which is heavily influenced by Hindu speculations and traditional metaphysics generally, the concepts … More ...
More signs of the times:
Here’s a claim that 99.8 percent of FCC indecency complaints were filed by a single activist group. The facts seem a little confused, but the evident general inactivity on the conservative side of the issue is the sort of thing the “conservative trend” in American life amounts to. The truth is that there isn’t … More ...