thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb The deconstruction of race, gender and whatnot rolls on:
People who haven’t dealt much with difficult family members and co-workers are sometimes puzzled when someone takes an utterly indefensible position, insists it’s beyond question, and refuses to budge. The strategy’s rational in the right setting, though. If someone who can’t simply be gotten rid of (wife, brother, colleague, pastor, CBS news, whoever) insists that … More ...
I started reading the stuff about the CBS documents on W’s National Guard service, mostly because the situation seemed so odd. The best thing I found on the issue of authenticity is the Flash overlay between a CBS document and the same thing produced by MS Word using default settings. (I’m told versions by people … More ...
Right-wingers are alarmed by totalitarian features of advanced liberalism: its insistent universalism, its theoretical coherence and simplicity, its resolute suppression of alternative principles of social order, its principled rejection of common sense, inherited ways, and the very concept of human nature. In the long run, they ask, how much difference can there be between “inclusiveness”—putting … More ...
Isn’t the claim that we have “democracy” a bit of a fossil? It may have been arguable in 1840 that the goal was popular rule, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense today:
A commenter asks those who post here “What does your ideal America look like?” The question’s worth discussing.
From the standpoint of specific practical political goals, I don’t really have an ideal America. No society is ideal, since every society depends on the cooperation of imperfect human beings. The specifics of what’s good politically depend … More ...
In America politics is more and more a matter of social metaphysics:
I’ve commented that the AIDS industry promotes death through a sort of perverse moralism: sexual freedom and sex equality, which from the standpoint of advanced liberalism are absolute metaphysical necessities, trump medical and public health considerations, which the spoiled children of techocracy believe infinitely manipulable. One illustration: the World AIDS Conference, at which sexual … More ...
The logic of antidiscrimination law continues to work itself out: scholar proposes compulsory “tolerance” within churches. The argument’s no joke if you’ve thought through the implications of existing legal principles regarding equality of opportunity and access and the separation of religion from public discourse. Whatever the activity, you have to rearrange it to make … More ...
Maybe in another 114 years I’ll link to Time Magazine again: here’s a story from their current issue on the oldest living American, my grandmother-in-law. [Obligatory reference to political theory: her full name is Emma Verona Calhoun Johnston. That’s “Calhoun” as in John C. Calhoun, although she’s not a direct descendent.]