thoughts in and out of season
It is a requirement of human freedom and dignity that Catholic doctrine be understood as true, unchanging and publicly knowable. To the extent doctrine is settled and knowable, to be a Catholic is not to subject oneself to the rule of priests but to live intelligently in the world. Doctrine then plays a part (speaking … More ...
There will always be an England, or maybe some other country with the same name: Spectator and its Tory MP editor may face charges over Taki race rant. In a short opinion piece the columnist Taki used the expressions “black thugs” and “multiply like flies” in connection with West Indians. The Guardian, heir … More ...
The Totally Managed Universal Order has its problems. Perfect uniform central control of everything takes an infinite amount of time and effort, and is never carried out even tolerably well by those on the scene. Here is a field report from the new England, where a drunk on a train or child who bumps his … More ...
What’s the point of this treaty? Global Treaty Seeks to Wean World Off Smoking. Under the treaty, countries commit themselves to laws to curb tobacco use by ending advertising, requiring health warnings on cigarette packets, barring the use of “deceptive” terms on labels and the like. Neither the treaty, the article, nor the ineffable … More ...
Philosophical pragmatism is mostly the habit of changing the subject if a line of thought makes one uncomfortable. It’s the collapse of the coherence theory of truth into a comfort theory of truth. Such a view can have the appearance of great reasonableness, of not wanting to take things too far. A consequence of the … More ...
I just made the rounds of the blogs of those who have dropped by and left comments and must say I was impressed by the energy, intelligence and good writing. I especially liked Theist on Augustine and Aquinas and Jeff Culbreath’s discussion of “modernist tendencies”. It’s good to have a standard to live up … More ...
A basic issue for many arguments in favor of Christianity is whether our words and thoughts somehow catch hold of reality. If they do, then the arguments for Christianity start looking very strong. If they don’t, then we’re nowhere in more ways than one.
On the face of it, the issue is silly. If what … More ...
What to do about AIDS in Africa? Easy, says a New York Times Op-Ed by Kati Marton of the International Woman’s Health Coalition. It’s mostly a disease of powerless and victimized women, so the answer is empowerment: female condoms and microbicides, and programs that train women how to resist sexual predators. Sex and disease are … More ...
Any incident is good enough when it’s something you want to do anyway: Connecticut College cancels classes to discuss problems of racism. A couple weeks ago someone wrote “nigger” on a poster relating to Black History Month, and a few days later someone told a “student of color” [sic] to “go back … More ...
Breaking down the barriers at Scotland Yard: London police change policy to recruit first transsexual officer . They had wanted to recruit transsexuals, whom they regard as an “under-represented group”, as police officers. Unfortunately, PC was stymied by a requirement that suspects be searched by officers of the same sex. Since transsexuals haven’t been able … More ...