thoughts in and out of season
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 ...
A concrete result of the destruction by the Derrida virus and related strains of the ability to think like a normal human being: Hanging Corpse Admired as Sculpture on Campus. It was for this, it appears, that the Hungarians overthrew communism.
I find it extraordinarily illuminating to view modernism and postmodernism as collections of … More ...
Nikos Salingaros has made some fascinating material available that gives the background to an essay he wrote on “The Derrida Virus” that I mentioned a month or so ago. (The essay is no longer available on the web but it appears it will be published in Telos.) The material provides a perspective on how … More ...
A correspondent envisions a
“conservative ecumenism that would bring about a revival of Christendom, with Catholic, Orthodox, and even theologically conservative Lutherans and other Protestants finding some way to join as the reunified Body of Christ.”
I think my correspondent’s remark may have been prompted by a comment I made that
… More ...“it is important for
William Buckley left some on the American Right with a residue of Anglophilia and Ivy League snobbery. Here’s something guaranteed to cure even the most stubborn case: lady nominalist leaves Yale to take Regius Chair of Divinity at Oxford. The bit about the black leather clerical attire (the lady is also an Episcopal priestess … More ...
European democracy: EU bigwigs are debating a proposed new Constitution that would definitively turn the EU into a superstate, and most Europeans have never heard of the thing.
Some recent items on the sexes:
What is the Christian attitude toward race, ethnicity and peoplehood?
Such things do not determine human worth any more than other aspects of social position do. Nonetheless, it seems important to me to recover a Christian conception of legitimate particularism. Such a conception would necessarily include some degree of ethnic identity and loyalty and therefore … More ...
Rock ‘n roll overthrew communism, says Hungary’s ambassador to the United States. According to Andras Simonyi, it was the Beatles, Cream, Traffic and Jimi Hendrix—not the Bible, Bach, or S�ndor Pet�fi—that gave Hungarian baby boomers the resolve to bring down the communist state.
The fall of communism, like the defeat of Nazi Germany, was … More ...
Do small boys still play cops and robbers? If they do, here are a couple of variations they might try: nail a small businessman for having an ashtray in his shop and fine him $6,000. After that they can take a bishop down to headquarters and grill him over allegations that he said that some … More ...