thoughts in and out of season
How seriously should anyone take complaints that American society is “totalitarian”? After all, people here can mostly say and do what they want. Elections are free, the press uncensored, the police and courts comparatively honest and law-abiding, person and property generally secure. Education, religion and culture are as independent of outside control as … More ...
Maybe “gynocide” wasn’t so totally gynocidal: The victims of the witch hunt history would rather forget. Of the 60,000 or so persons executed for witchcraft in Europe between 1450 and 1750, perhaps 12-20,000 were men. In some regions, such as Burgundy, Normandy and Iceland, men were a majority of those accused. Those aren’t facts … More ...
New studies show that the whole idea of basing what you do on studies, psychological advice and general schemes of social improvement is a bad one. In particular:
Tales of high and low life from the New Europe: In the beau monde, former French prime minister Cresson was charged in connection with a European Union fraud scandal. The lady had apparently given her dentist boyfriend at least $150,000 in EU money. Meanwhile, down in the trenches,
… More ...A conflict of liberal absolutes: Minneapolis Library workers sue over porn. Under liberalism, patrons have an absolute and unquestionable right to view whatever materials they wish. The alternative, since it’s a public library, is state censorship by the very institution charged to make information publicly available. On the other hand, female workers also have … More ...
A survey of students, faculty and administrators has now made it possible, even in The New York Times, to make the obvious point that “diversity” in higher education lowers standards and satisfaction for just about everybody. Even the administrators who defend diversity programs so loudly don’t like them much—47.7 percent oppose them, and of … More ...
Every word is true, but why put it in a way no one will understand? European Union Cannot Be Reduced to a Market, Cautions Pope. The EU, he says, “must promote a model of society that honors the fundamental dignity of the whole person and his rights, that favors relations based on justice, mutual … More ...
The Catholic faith becomes the property of the faithful through the traditions that give it definite form and stability. It is through those traditions that a refined system of thought, feeling and observance works its way into the life of the people, and the people lay hold of the central truths of religion. Without them … More ...
An item that illustrates John Rao’s point about the infinite openness of “common sense” in an officially pluralist society, as well as my point about the impossibility of dealing reasonably with sex under the new dispensation: Leading U.K. health agency gives 11-year-olds free condoms. The reason? They “want youngsters to become comfortable with condoms … More ...
Some useful background on affirmative action and related issues: Affirmative action’s evolution. One point the article makes that hadn’t occurred to me is that the trigger for the switch from the rhetoric of justice to the rhetoric of diversity was Justice Powell’s tie-breaking opinion in Bakke.
I think the switch would have come … More ...