Blame Canada, I suppose
What does it mean that over 40% of Canadian teens (64% in French Canada) think America is “evil”?
Uncategorized
Lords disdain to spare the rod
The House of Lords has rejected a ban on spanking. Like other “social issues” the question of legitimate parental chastisement provides food for thought, and in fact leads very quickly to basic issues.
The arguments in favor of the ban are that “[s]macking can lead to battering which can lead to death,” and “children … More ...
A dialogue on liberalism
The following dialogue is intended to clarify the basic arguments for philosophical liberalism and problems regarding those arguments. Since I’m not a liberal, it seems fair to me that liberalism should lose, but since it’s a dialogue it should present the liberal point of view as forcefully as possible. The liberalism I’m concerned with is … More ...
Bush’s theocratic America
How religious issues present themselves to the mainstream press in conservative red-state America: according to the Salt Lake Tribune,
- When the Pope says that Catholic institutions should be genuinely Catholic he’s “preaching conformity.”
- When Unitarian Universalists go from celebrating “gay marriage” to celebrating multiple-partner arrangements they’re “support[ing] lots of love.”
- And when a Swedish
James Hitchcock on the debacle of liberalism
He’s written a useful discussion of the collapse of liberalism into radical-left extremism: Supremely Modern Liberals.
Hitchcock seems to waffle somewhat on the nature of liberalism itself and whether things might have turned out otherwise. That might be because he’s a historian and as such tends to view something like liberalism as a complex … More ...
Family values return!
Too much inclusiveness is a bad thing, British homosexualists have discovered. The Lords have voted to open up “civil partnerships,” designed by the Blair government as an exact replica of marriage for same-sex couples, to caregivers and others who live together in stable domestic arrangements. The move has transformed “gay rights” rhetoric in a radically … More ...
How much does virtual online reality change things?
A friend writes:
… More ...You have this vision of liberalism or modernity as the attempt to create a self-sufficient manmade system which becomes a substitute for the given world, I wonder if you have any thoughts about how computers fit into that scheme. For many people the computer becomes a substitute for the real world. It
Don’t just stand there, do something!
A couple of online petitions in support of marriage from Alliance for Marriage and Institute for Religion and Democracy.
Good news for tolerance
Hate-filled bigots have been stopped dead in their tracks: an organization had been sending families of fallen soldiers and policemen medallions with a picture of the Liberty Bell and the quotations “Liberty Rings For All Nations” and “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” On the reverse they had been putting the man’s name and the … More ...
Were the Wars of Religion really that?
The claim that the history of Europe from 1517 to 1648 shows that mixing politics and religion leads to endless violence, so that peace requires the secular state, always seemed odd to me. After all, states kill by nature, and they can be defended only if someone is willing to put his life on the … More ...