thoughts in and out of season
An old friend, who considers herself a liberal, asked why I classified W as one. It really seemed batty to her although she could see that the “big spender” label would apply. My reply (somewhat edited):
… More ...He’s a liberal because he thinks he’s called on to reconstruct things to bring about a universal order in
Last weekend I attended commencement exercises at a very prestigious Northeastern liberal arts college distinguished by its selectiveness, its commitment to social progress, and its extraordinarily beautiful and lavishly funded campus. I was struck by the unity of view of all the speakers. Here’s the gist of what I heard:
Here’s an image that appeared on a piece of junk mail I received from the U.S. Postal Service pushing their “premium forwarding service,” which lets your mail follow you when you go on vacation. Whatever happened to feminism?
I suppose it matters that other panels on the card make it clear that what’s being shown … More ...
The more organized knowledge becomes the less people know. Formal studies are good for some things. Even football coaches have chalk talks, which are a kind of formal instruction. There are limits though. You don’t become a good cook from food science or a good teacher by studying teaching.
When knowledge is over-organized what counts … More ...
Steve Sailer has in interesting comment on a question I’ve thought about from time to time, why multicultural societies are less creative. Basically, he says that necessity is the mother of invention: if there had been a lot of black musicians in early-60s Liverpool, the Beatles wouldn’t have had to come up with their … More ...
The following essay appeared in the December 11, 2002 issue of FrontPage magazine. It is also available in Spanish.
The fountainhead of the modern human rights movement is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. Today, when so much is up for grabs in the … More ...
There is a conception of identity that grows up and takes hold in liberal society, if only because we can think about ourselves and our actions only by reference to what we are. As always, we define our identity by reference to the common goods the community recognizes. If I say I am American the … More ...
The attitude of elite and populace toward each other sums up the situation today. Elites consider the people ignorant and bigoted, the people think their rulers pretentious, hypocritical and self-seeking. The reason for the dislike and suspicion is less personal qualities, with regard to which elite and populace may differ little, than social position and … More ...
To think and act we have to trust things that go beyond what we can perceive or demonstrate. Our knowledge cannot be a mere summary of the evidence but must rest on something further—at a minimum, on a belief that future evidence will validate it. It is a system of coherent belief, and like any … More ...