thoughts in and out of season
Material presented as lecture but not put in print.
Here’s a talk I gave to the H. L. Mencken Club a couple weeks ago. A shorter version was published at Crisis Magazine.
Social Issues: What, Why and Whither
by James Kalb
Today I’m going to speak about social issues: what they are, why they’re issues, and where they’re going. I’ll include some comments … More ...
[I gave the following talk at the 2014 conference of The H. L. Mencken Club.]
The Left doesn’t like the idea of human nature. It tells them they’re not free to do what they want. From a factual perspective it tells them people don’t change much, so the way things were in the past is … More ...
I gave this lecture at the 2013 meeting of the H. L. Mencken Club.
The “Inclusion” Obsession
by James Kalb
We hear a lot about inclusiveness, and it’s apparently very important, but the topic is never discussed analytically. The idea seems to be that it’s warm and fuzzy and just obviously a good thing. The … More ...
The following is a talk delivered at the 2011 Conference of the H. L. Mencken Club.
Why has American conservatism been such a flop? It finds it impossible to define what it wants, stick with it, and defend it. The result is that it never wins and never even stands its ground.
To understand what’s … More ...
Here’s the text of a lecture I presented at the 2011 Roman Forum conference at Lake Garda in Italy:
James Kalb
Presented at the Roman Forum conference in Gardone Riviera, Italy,
July 6, 2011
This conference raises a variety of questions. What is the present situation? How should we deal with … More ...
Here’s a talk I gave yesterday at the annual conference of the H. L. Mencken Club.
… More ...The title of my talk is PC: The Cultural Antichrist.
It’s an odd title, but political correctness is an odd tendency. It’s a bit uncanny. It doesn’t fit in with how we normally think about things. That’s why
Here is the text of a talk I gave at the H. L. Mencken Club conference.
October 31, 2009
The other speakers have discussed foreign policy by reference to specifically American tendencies. I will discuss something that I think is more general, advanced liberalism—the dominant … More ...
Here’s the text of a talk I gave at the first annual conference of The H. L. Mencken Club. (Actually, I only had time to present the first 3/5 or so of the talk. The remainder was mostly a rehash of previous talks, though, so maybe it’s just as well.)
James … More ...
Here’s the text of remarks regarding “The Future of Conservatism” I made on a panel at an ISI conference at Yale.
I’ve got 15 minutes to talk about the future of conservatism, so all I can do is present one part of that future in bold strokes.
Conservatism has big problems today. When you’ve … More ...
Here is the text (plus or minus a few ad libs) of a lecture delivered at the Roman Forum conference in Gardone, Italy, on July 3, 2008.