thoughts in and out of season
My liberal lawyer correspondent (previous exchanges here and here) has asked how to compare and decide between a liberal and a more traditionalist and Catholic approach to politics and society. Here’s an edited version of the exchange:
… More ...Liberal Lawyer: Is it possible to come up with an objective standard by which one could
Rationalized insanity like “zero tolerance” and political correctness suggests there is something basically irrational in social life today that has to do with a conflict between publicly compulsory standards and normal human expectations. Some people try to laugh the conflict off and make jokes about PC or whatever. Others deny it or explain it away—these … More ...
My exchange with my Finnish correspondent continues (previous installments are here, here, and here). This time he’s pressing the issue of the value of tradition:
… More ...Finnish Correspondent: Your reliance on tradition seems misplaced. Isn’t it just functionalism? Some social arrangements may work, although they are not right. For instance, abortion has
Here’s a useful FAQ on the Inquisition put together by a PhD student at Cambridge. The reputation and symbolic status of the Inquisition, it seems, has much more to do with the needs of those who appeal to the symbol than with the institution itself.
Leaving the bigotry and darkness of Old Spain for the … More ...
Postmodern architecture, like “postmodern” productions generally, notoriously tries to disorient. I suppose the justification is that we can’t grasp reality, and to be oriented is to presume that we can do so—to be precritical, monocultural, fundamentalist, Cartesian or whatnot. If that’s so, then to disorient us might shake us out of our self-satisfied lethargy … More ...
I’ve argued that sex is right only when it helps constitute an enduring union between two persons that points beyond personal interest because of what the union is, and that can be so only in the case of sex within marriage that is open to new life. Someone who commented on my Sexual Morality FAQ… More ...
The idea that change as such is good, and resistance to change ignorant, weak, fearful, self-centered, and at least mildly pathological, goes with the view that the past is a mass of bigotry and oppression redeemed only by its foreshadowing of the here-and-now. There are obvious problems with such views:
A wholesale objection to conservatism is that things have always changed, conservatives have always objected to changes, and the way things are now is obviously better—as even conservatives agree.
An obvious rejoinder is that there’s always a lot more stability than change, and a lot of radical initiatives have ended in catastrophe. There’s no conservatism … More ...
The word “fundamentalism” is confusing because the real point of interest is not a particular religious movement but a basic philosophical issue, whether God is symbol or reality. Is religious language just a way of talking about human ideals and concerns, or does it sometimes mean what it says? Since the former view is presupposed … More ...
Roger Scruton has a really excellent article on Islam and politics (*.pdf format). A notable aspect of the piece is the light it sheds on the strength of Islam in relation to modernity. Scruton’s account confirms that radical Islam isn’t medieval at all. It reflects, for example, in the form of Wahhabism, the Protestant Reformation … More ...