thoughts in and out of season
The uniform view of the cultural Left—which includes everything that counts as mainstream from the standpoint of our bureaucracies of truth—is that nods by Republican leaders toward traditionalist cultural concerns prove that the GOP has been hijacked by fundamentalist wackos. That’s not rhetoric and spin, things really look to them that way. It’s clear … More ...
One of my main points here at Turnabout has been that if government sells itself as neutral administration and adjudication, then ultimate power belongs to whoever gets to say what knowledge is. Another has been that officially-recognized knowledge today is a matter of “expertise”: the views of self-contained bureaucracies of knowledge arrived at in accordance … More ...
From the time of Bacon and Descartes, modernity has aimed at simple powerful principles that can be fully grasped, made completely evident, and used for comprehensive control of phenomena. As a result:
It’s a mistake for conservatives to stake their case on the appeal to freedom and equality as ultimate principles that is the stuff of political rhetoric today. The appeal is self-defeating, both for conservatives and for anyone intelligently attached to those goals. Their logic is innately unlimited, and the attempt to put them into effect … More ...
I reworded the poll so it no longer prejudges the extent to which the events have happened already. One could easily claim that Christianity was decisively driven from public life, and America stopped being America, with the universal adoption of PC and multiculturalist rhetoric during the Clinton administration. If Christianity can’t be viewed as anything … More ...
I wonder what Russell Kirk would think about Anne Coulter’s articulation of the Conservative Cause?
To be taken seriously conservatives should disown this kind of support.
Someone suggested in connection with my dialogue on liberalism, citing Norberto Bobbio, that the summum bonum liberalism proposes is validated by universal consent in the form of international human rights conventions. My response:
… More ...I can’t see international human rights law as a universal consensus on the highest good. The people who determine the policies
I’m sorry I haven’t been posting much recently. I’ve been busy editing things I’ve already posted and organizing them into online “books” in hopes of making them more useful. I hope to return to posting shortly. In the meantime readers might want to look at some of the golden oldies, for example The meaning of … More ...
Freedom—the liberation of desire from restraint by other people’s understanding of the good—is central to liberalism. It follows that liberalism is incoherent. The problem is that freedom has to be freedom to do something in particular, and goals conflict. As a result some particular goals, and thus some freedoms, have to be chosen over … More ...