thoughts in and out of season
Evan McLaren notes that I mostly deal with grand issues and tend toward a “big tent” approach, at least among right-wingers, and wonders whether that makes sense.
I think my approach has been helpful theoretically, for getting an overall understanding of issues. If you give free play to a lot of different concerns, and don’t … More ...
A friend has forwarded to me his translation of Letter to Cardinal Fornari On the Errors of Our Time by Juan Donoso Cortes and given permission to make it available on the web. At the time the letter was written Cardinal Fornari was in charge of a commission studying modern errors for Pope Pius IX … More ...
There are any number of decline-of-Western-Civ books. Since I just wrote one myself, I ought to talk down the competition. In the case of John Carroll’s book, The Wreck of Western Culture: Humanism Revisited, I just can’t. It’s too brilliant.
Carroll’s basic point is that man needs a place to stand, and humanism—the attempt … More ...
In my discussion of Edward Feser’s The Last Superstition I commented that “functional pattern” (my usual term) seems to cover the same ground as Thomistic “formal cause” and “final cause” taken together. In each case the point is to describe the thing missing in modern thought that makes it go haywire, most strikingly in connection … More ...
Environmentalism is truly a religion. Consider:
It has its weekly rituals (putting out the blue box); it has its dogmas that must not be questioned (catastrophic, man-made global warming) and its corresponding heretics (Bjorn Lomborg, and everyone else who has a hint of scepticism regarding the dogma of catastrophic, man-made global warming); it has its … More ...
Rod Dreher sent a note asking how trads should argue with “gay marriage” proponents, and posted my reply at Beliefnet.
And that comforts me. (The title of this entry isn’t literally true, but Rod Dreher does say my book is “a blockbuster that belongs on the shelves of any thinking conservative who wants to understand where we are today, and where we are going.”)
I just finished reading Edward Feser’s The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism. In spite of its title, the book is less a discussion of the “New Atheism” (Dawkins, Dennett, et. al.) than a wonderfully clear overview of Thomism. As such, it emphasises its response to the insights and inadequacies of … More ...
Zenit, the international Catholic news agency, just published an interview with me about the topics I cover in my book.
I just finished reading Allan Carlson’s Third Ways: How Bulgarian Greens, Swedish Housewives, and Beer-Swilling Englishmen Created Family-Centered Economies – And Why They Disappeared. It’s a really excellent collection of short case studies of 20th century attempts to create, recreate or maintain local, familial, distributist or agrarian economic forms in the face of commies, … More ...