thoughts in and out of season
A correspondent with a scientific turn of mind wanted to pursue a question raised here a a week or two ago, why the Derrida and similar viruses are such a plague now when earlier they weren’t a problem.
My comments (slightly edited):
… More ...It seems that most “why now” explanations emphasize features of modern life
How the Council seemed to some at the time: Gregorian Chant Strangled in its Own Cradle. To the young monks of a Benedictine monastery in Rome, Vatican II meant that it was a religious duty to toss away everything to which they had been brought up in the Church for the sake of imitating … More ...
Daniel Pipes has a list of questions he says are helpful in Identifying Muslim Moderates. It occurred to me that with surprisingly slight modification the list could become a guide for identifying liberal moderates:
Recent changes to Canadian law greatly broaden the scope of binding arbitration. Under the new rules, if people don’t want to go to court to settle civil disputes they don’t have to, but can get a legally enforcible decision from an arbitrator. One consequence is that it is now practical of Muslims in Canada to … More ...
Evidence that there is at least one sensible European politician: Czech President Vaclav Klaus warns Europe of ‘dream world’ woes. He doesn’t like the EU, thinks the Europeans are living in lotus-land, views the Euro as a purely political scheme, believes “you cannot have a democratic accountability in anything bigger than a nation … More ...
The dialectic of the state and the family in England:
In a multicultural society, common sense gets abolished because it’s a matter of settled inarticulate understandings (a.k.a. “deeply rooted social stereotypes”). Bureaucrats must therefore run everything in accordance with their own form of rationality. There’s nothing to keep the society’s fundamental logic from getting carried to completion, so that’s what happens.
For example: in … More ...
A French parliamentary group has called for a ban on the wearing of any visible religious symbols in schools. The question had been whether Muslim girls can wear Islamic head scarves, but if that’s a problem why isn’t it a problem for a Catholic girl to wear a little silver cross? President Chirac takes the … More ...
Here’s an interesting pair of stories that illustrate how “anti-discrimination” rules originally based on claims that a distinction is utterly irrational can change fundamental standards that determine the ability of an institution to perform its core mission:
If draconian measures are needed to enforce a law, we should ask whether the public benefit justifies the penalties. A copyright bill is being introduced in the Senate that would make it a federal felony punishable by five years in prison to use a camcorder to make a copy of a film in a movie … More ...