thoughts in and out of season
Social conservatives complain that their issues—abortion, “gay marriage” and whatnot—aren’t taken nearly as seriously by politicians on their side as by those on the other side. For Republicans, it seems, those issues are mostly vote getters that can be compromised or negotiated away, while for Democrats they’re religious absolutes that take precedence over everything. Leftists… More ...
An obvious lesson of post-election complaints by leftists is that highly-educated and well-connected Blues, including famous commentators on public affairs, simply don’t understand Reds. They haven’t a clue as to how most of their countrymen look at things or why they look at them that way. Hence the fear, loathing and fantasy.
Some explanation of … More ...
Leftist blogs say the election turned on “gay marriage,” the prominent rightist blogs say it didn’t (Kos and Little Green Footballs provide an example). The election was close, and turned on any number of things. The reason for the dispute over this particular point, it seems, is that leftists believe the interpretation irrefutably discredits … More ...
Someone sent this to me yesterday: The Only Vote Worth Casting in November, a statement by Alasdair MacIntyre on the presidential election. The statement is no longer quite topical, but it’s still worth comment because MacIntyre is a distinguished thinker and his views are in line with those of many Catholics who try to … More ...
At bottom, the “culture war” is a war between subjectivism and realism: does the world we experience get its order and significance from human thoughts, feelings, intentions and actions, so by choosing our thoughts and actions properly we can bring about a new Creation, or is it what it is largely without regard to … More ...
“Faith schools”—those with a definite religious orientation—have been something of an issue in England the past several years. The issue comes out of the secular and multicultural commitments of the British state. The problem is that secular multicultural education is always bad, at least on any large scale, because schools of that kind can’t … More ...
Steve Sailer’s done the research, and it appears likely that Kerry’s IQ is actually lower than Bush’s. In itself the point isn’t particularly interesting, but as Sailer points out it gains some interest from the insistence of the Left that (1) “IQ” is an absurd concept that means nothing, and (2) lefties have higher … More ...
Here’s some background on how the American Catholic bishops came to sound collectively like standard-issue leftists, except on the issue of abortion: Social Teachings at Risk in the American Catholic Church. The piece is a collection of notes and snippets from a book by Michael Warner, Changing Witness, Catholic Bishops and Public Policy, 1917-1994… More ...
Here’s an interesting analysis of the outlook behind recent Vatican policies regarding Church, state, democracy, human rights and whatnot: What Kind of Caesar?. According to the author, Russell Hittinger, traditional Catholic teaching assumed that the state has a necessary sacral dimension—all authority, after all, is from God—and naturally wanted that dimension to be Catholic. … More ...
On the whole, I find the Guardian a summation of the worst features of the intellectual Left gone mainstream and become dominant: smug, ignorant, narrow, self-centered, unimaginative, intolerant, and sometimes—whether it’s a cause or effect I don’t know—downright evil. In personal dealings with people who meet that description (mostly not leftists) I’ve noticed that the … More ...