thoughts in and out of season
Hegel points out somewhere that at one time men started the day by praying or reading the Bible, while in his day they started it by reading a newspaper. Today I suppose they mostly turn on the TV or radio or go online. Whatever the specifics, Hegel’s general point is an important one. When you … More ...
Still, in spite of the gloom and doom of the last posting, life goes on, and no cloud but has a silver lining. For example, a big benefit of the recent scandals in the Catholic Church and growing anti-religious trends in Western life is that they’ve squashed a lot of the happy talk the Church … More ...
First it was the French Jews, then the Dutch, then the Germans, all people with fertility rates well in the red, who were reported to be leaving their homelands. Now it seems it’s the British too: Almost one in 10 British citizens living overseas. In the meantime the flow of Third World immigrants … More ...
When I passed through the Houston airport recently they kept threatening over the PA system to arrest anyone who made jokes about airport security. Since that’s where we are, it’s hard to believe many people will take complaints from the airport imams seriously. The Muslims still seem rather ham-handed manipulating public views. Maybe they should … More ...
In my last post I suggested that liberalism intrinsically causes crime, because the strong impulses, weak intelligence and spotty human attachments that make a man criminal are supported by basic liberal principles (making preference the standard of the good, reducing reason to the service of desire, turning autonomy into an ultimate standard). I then suggested … More ...
The U.S. Justice Department recently released a report highlighting the horrifically high American incarceration rate. According to the report, at the end of last year there were 2.2 million Americans behind bars, with an additional 4.8 million on probation or parole. That compares with 1.5 million incarcerated in China and 870,000 in Russia, the countries … More ...
The dictionary definition of theocracy is government of a state “by priests or according to religious law,” or perhaps “by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided.” As such, it applies to states like traditional Tibet, early Mormon Utah, and revolutionary Iran, but not in substance to any traditional Christian … More ...
In France, criticism of a private fund-raising effort now seems to constitute a violation of the separation of Church and state: Catholic Clergy Attack French Telethon Over Stem Cell Aid.
The country’s Muscular Dystrophy Association runs an annual telethon to raise money for medical research, part of which is spent on research on … More ...
I find this article bothersome: Can Hollywood ignore a film praised by critics? The film, of course, is Apocalypto, and “Hollywood” refers to those offended by Mel Gibson’s drunken abuse of a Jewish cop. Drunken driving is a very serious matter. Those who do it repeatedly, as Mel Gibson reportedly does, obviously have … More ...
The Left (which in most important respects includes liberals and “moderates”) thinks about things technologically. Leftists may talk about the evils of logocentric thinking or whatnot, but that sort of thing answers no questions, and when something actually has to be decided scientism cuts in. As a result, all principles that matter have to be … More ...