thoughts in and out of season
I recently had an email exchange with a black man who’s generally sympathetic with what I say but has some concerns. Here’s the exchange, which I’ve edited somewhat in the interests of coherence, concision, and clarity.
… More ...Black Trad: I have been reading many of your articles online and tend to agree with you about most
I have a review of the first volume of Christopher Alexander’s The Nature of Order in The University Bookman.
There’s a tendency today to criticize “essentialism,” the idea that something like Islam has an enduring character such that (for example) you aren’t going to see a moderate liberal Islam become the predominant form of the religion.
I’m inclined toward a moderate essentialism. It seems to me that at bottom the opposing nominalist view is … More ...
“Nostalgia” is frequently associated today with “racism”, “sexism”, and “homophobia”. Among our betters, it has become a sort of general put-down for popular attachments. As in the case of “tolerance,” “openness,” and “acceptance of change,” the point of the expression at bottom is “do what you’re told and like it.”
Such expressions … More ...
The modern technological outlook can’t deal with issues of identity, because it abolishes essences—understandings of what things “really are”—in favor of measurable properties that fit the thing for particular chosen ends. That’s why it’s thought ignorant, irrational and abusive to treat someone differently because he’s a man or a gypsy, but not because he … More ...
Will it ever be possible to force gays back into the closet? That rhetorical question is considered a crushing rejoinder when someone objects to the attempt to normalize homosexuality. Whoever is making the objection, it implies, is a typical reactionary—either he hasn’t thought things through, and is living in the past, or else he’s planning … More ...
Another part of the appeal of Catholicism today (apart from its truth) is a sort of this-wordly extra ecclesiam nulla salus: outside the Church there’s no satisfaction now and no hope for the future.
The problem can be stated briefly: the West now stands publicly for secular liberalism. The latter has reached a philosophical, … More ...
Because conservatism as normally understood is not possible in America today. Conservatism stands for loyalty to what is settled. It presumes that one belongs to a culture and civilization that is basically well-founded and coherent, so that it will return to type if a few errors are debunked and excesses suppressed.
None of that makes … More ...
Paul Gottfried makes some interesting points in a thinkpiece on white nationalists over at Takimag. His basic argument:
… More ...The rising generation cares even less than its parents about holding on to an inherited civilization. Most of my students in Western civ courses have only the vaguest idea of the figures in the Bible (including Jesus)
Here is the text (plus or minus a few ad libs) of a lecture delivered at the Roman Forum conference in Gardone, Italy, on July 3, 2008.