thoughts in and out of season
Martin Peretz notes in his publication The New Republic that liberalism is “bookless and dying.” He’s right, of course. A political movement with no guides in sight other than consultants, careerists and cranks isn’t going to go anywhere. The problem is that the lack of thought and vision isn’t peculiar to the Left. … More ...
This does seem encouraging, although there’s a long way to go. One of the ‘ulema is putting it on the line and debating imprisoned radicals as to the Islamic correctness of their understanding of jihad:
… More ...“If you can convince us that your ideas are justified by the Koran, then we will join you in
I don’t know how to interpret anything, the Pope, sanctity and Vatican politics least of all, but it still seems interesting from several perspectives that the Pope reportly intends to hang on long enough to canonize Pius XII.
UPDATE: That won’t happen if the apparent prayers of William F. Buckley, Jr. for the Pope’s … More ...
A slice of life for a socially conservative Christian journalist in the Big City: Eden in Exile.
Everybody today thinks laws against employment discrimination are a great good and even a moral requirement. I think they’re an obvious evil. I think they’re inconsistent with any reasonable conservatism, which means I think they’re inconsistent with any tolerable society. I’ve complained about them here and there on Turnabout, but a summary of the … More ...
The Catholic Church in England and Wales has issued some Diversity and Equality Guidelines on the relationship between antidiscrimination law and the mission of the Church and its agencies. The Guidelines have drawn some unfavorable comment because of their positive treatment of “living together” (including homosexual) situations. Beyond the specific issues, however, they include a … More ...
Has public discussion come to an end? Bush and his supporters want to transform the world by force to eliminate tyranny and establish freedom and democracy everywhere. The transformation of the world is to parallel the accelerated tranformation of the United States through effectively open borders. It’s not clear why any of that makes sense, … More ...
The vast resources devoted to research and education or at least schooling today seem to ensure that we’re in a position to carry on everything intelligently. That turns out not to be so. We can’t grasp the world as a whole in thought, and the assumption that we can do so through expertise divorces our … More ...
A common objection to Catholicism is that it imprisons the mind by substituting authority and dogma for free thought and inquiry. The objection restates the modern rejection of revelation and tradition as authorities, and from that point of view is important and should be answered.
One response is that experience doesn’t support the claim that … More ...
Random findings of tangential culture-war relevance: the Aztecs really did engage in torture, human sacrifice and cannibalism, just like the Spaniards said, and carbon-14 tests did not show the Shroud of Turin is a Medieval fake (the tests were botched, and it now appears the Shroud is between 1300 and 3000 years old.) The … More ...