thoughts in and out of season
The German Christian Democrats get with the program: their 28-year-old pregnant unmarried mom shadow spokeswoman for family affairs is appealing for the votes of homosexuals by promising various gay rights reforms that it seems the Social Democrats and Greens have failed to deliver.
We escaped the heat yesterday by a visit to the Metropolitan Museum and were particularly struck by an exhibition of Thomas Eakins’ work and by some Gauguin canvases. Both represented possible responses to the basic problem of the late 19th century, the death of God. Eakins’ response was a sort of heroic materialism, the artist … More ...
We’ve puzzled before over the claim that EU expansion is the answer to the problem of illegal immigration. Statements of UN officials such as Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, suggest the reason:
… More ...“Europe’s asylum and migration problems cannot be addressed in Europe alone … It is in the regions of origin
Meanwhile, at the birthplace of American liberty, Colin Powell gets 100,000 bucks and a gold Liberty Medal in exchange for a speech in which he “called on Americans to live up to their national ideal of liberty by confronting poverty, bigotry and inequality as the nation pursues its war on terrorism.” Powell “focused on … More ...
Human rights just keep rolling: EU Parliament Votes To Establish Europe-Wide Right to Abortion . The resolution is non-binding, but nonetheless indicative. One interesting point is that it relies on The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) for the legal framework justifying assertion of the right. According to the … More ...
Could a free people conceivably accept the civil rights laws? Here’s a report from the front: “Specially Ill-Educated”, on the effects of the Federal command to “mainstream” students with behavioral disorders. If a kid kicks and bites but doesn’t injure people seriously it’s been decided in Washington that local educators can’t remove him from … More ...
A Zogby poll confirms the obvious: students are taught to believe “diversity” outranks ordinary honesty, which is mostly relative to personal and cultural standards anyway. They learn that business is a profession in which an “anything goes” attitude is uniquely likely to lead to success. And 97% of college seniors agree that their studies … More ...
Here’s a worthwhile account of the Islamophobia panic among British elites. The panic is quite comprehensible—in times of stress a society needs to reaffirm its core beliefs, and Western political life is now based on what the article calls “a profound distrust of the public – a fear that base sentiments lurk under the surface, … More ...
Why are the people at The New York Times convinced they can advise Musharraf how to achieve stability and progress in Pakistan? I would think the man’s situation demands more than blandly self-assured comments about promoting democratic institutions and making people aware that violence causes problems. Apparently not, though—we live in a global age, and … More ...
The Tate Gallery has paid £22,300 for 30 grams of merda d’artista. The artist, apparently an honest and talented man, canned the stuff and sold it for the price of 30 grams of gold to express his utter disgust with the art world. A couple years later, in 1961, he died of drink. At … More ...