thoughts in and out of season
I expected there would be more “others” with this poll than previous polls, and so far I’ve been right. I do hope that if you vote that way you’ll say what you think the true account is. People are puzzled by “inclusiveness,” so their theories are all over the place, and a list of some … More ...
It seems that sexual morality has two aspects:
Neither aspect makes sense given an … More ...
I’ve been reading a couple of pre-war right-wingers, Hilaire Belloc and Julius Evola. In the few things I’ve been reading, Belloc’s big political concept is Nation, Evola’s is Empire. Belloc seems to be mostly an old-fashioned continental liberal who likes citizenship and equal laws for those of the same nation. He thinks that in … More ...
A while back I noted the oddity of Catholic neocon George Weigel praising Philadelphia in the 50s as “a town of ethnic neighborhoods in which Catholic kids unselfconsciously identified themselves by parish … dang, it was great” and in a few lines without explanation attacking those who wanted to maintain ethnic and religious boundaries in … More ...
Melanie Phillips gives a pop version of objections to attempts by scientists and their hangers-on and popularizers to claim that something like modern natural science can explain everything.
The basic problem, I think, is that modern natural science achieves its amazing power through clarity and concentration, which means it achieves it through narrowness. It can’t … More ...
Another example of how people act when their metaphysics are challenged: Status of Catholic Church in Spain Threatened. The Catholic Church in Spain has protested a citizenship education program that promotes full normalization of homosexuality. Professor Gregorio Peces-Barba MartÃnez, apparently the socialist government’s main theoretician, has responded with a newspaper column in which he … More ...
People say religion is irrational and religious people are crazy. Sometimes that’s so, of course, but the same could be said of secular people and their views. The truth of the matter is that everyone has metaphysical principles that determine how he understands the world, and when someone insists on something without evidence, or even … More ...
A recent editorial in the New York Times, entitled “The Misery Strategy,” mixes abusive rhetoric with the Orwellian view that evil American leaders are imposing a restrictive immigration policy on the American people. In the midst of it all they nonetheless make a point worth answering:
… More ...[The] idea is that harsh, unrelenting
Every movement needs high-flown rhetoric, and trad rightwingery can’t be any different. Inspired by what seems voguish I’ve put together a few phrases for my own “I have a dream” speech. Additions are welcome.
… More ...I dream of an America that is a normal country.
I dream of an America that is not an all-purpose fantasy,
At bottom, conservatism is simply attachment to a specific society. It is therefore a disposition to maintain the features of the society that make it what it is: the particular people who make it up, the beliefs, commitments and institutions that order it, and the concrete features that define its character and distinguish it … More ...