thoughts in and out of season
The tyranny of liberalism is mostly a tyranny of ideas. It’s not completely disembodied, of course. Like every tyranny it’s run in a way consistent with the tyrants’ power and profit. The professional and managerial classes and bureaucratic and financial interests that maintain it benefit from the conversion of informal traditional arrangements into bureaucratic and … More ...
What is liberalism?
The view that equal freedom is the highest public standard, and that society should be a rational arrangement to put that standard into effect.
How can liberalism be tyrannical?
“Tyranny” is usurped and abused power. The goals of liberalism are comprehensive, and it views them as a simple matter of justice and … More ...
It’s hard to imagine how sex could be put into some kind of order without any reference at all to traditional taboos. How could you conceivably rationalize something so basic and powerful and hard to get a grip on and make it a matter of simple free choice? With that in mind, it seems obvious … More ...
A problem with expertise as now understood is that it makes standards of objective rigor substitute for common sense, and it can’t nail down enough things to deal with the world or even most practical situations in a way that comes up to those standards. The result is that what’s proposed for our belief are … More ...
I was discussing America, the Constitution, the liturgy and the Roman Catholicism with an Anglican and Americanist friend. It occurred to me that the issues were all related, so I decided I’d put them somewhat together. On the liturgy I said (in an edited way):
… More ...My vote for the Novus Ordo for now would be
That was the response of Time magazine to the papal election. They’re following through on their boast with yet another piece presenting the event as the outcome of a Machievellian campaign by Vatican insiders:
… More ...“In the days before the conclave, almost every Cardinal who deigned to speak to the press declared that he was praying
For some interesting discussions of the upcoming conclave see the pieces by “Sandro Magister,” an Italian journalist with a pen name, at www.chiesa. It appears from the April 7 and April 14 articles that a rather strong party, led by Ratzinger and other top cardinals, is proposing quite forcefully less outreach of the Assisi … More ...
It seems to me there’s a certain parallel between John Paul II and Ronald Reagan. Both were immensely popular for their hopefulness, their buoyancy, their ability to connect with all sorts of people, their love for what they led, their directness and willingness to stand on principle. Both were viewed with a mixture of contempt … More ...
I went to a lecture yesterday on the ins and outs of the Arian heresy. Obscure though the Arians may sound today, when John Henry Newman studied them and their sympathizers around 1830 the situation reminded him of nothing so much as the Anglican church, lots of politicos and time-servers with no bottom line … More ...
A finding of interest to Catholics and others who believe that open borders are good because immigrants are mostly Hispanic Catholics and “family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande”: increased English use by immigrants leads to teen sexual activity. The numbers are impressive. Among Hispanic teenagers in Arizona, 13.6% of Spanish speakers, 24.4% … More ...