More on Hell and handbaskets
For those who liked my gloom-and-doom entry last month, here’s something even gloomier and doomier from the late John Attarian: Requiem for the Right.
Building the future
A quote from Le Corbusier that proves the man’s intelligence: “The core of our old cities, with their domes and cathedrals, must be broken up and skyscrapers put in their place.” (Cited in A Humane Economy, 85.) Say what you like, he knew his stuff. The urban environment is the setting for the rituals … More ...
They say the darndest things
Lawrence Auster asks why so often it is women, more than men, who are unintimidated by liberals. His example is Jeane Kirkpatrick. Here are a couple more, one woman (Kathy Shaidle) quoting another (“andrea”): “Barack Obama? Look—Urkel’s running for president!”
… More ...“Yeah, I know I’m going to hell. Don’t care. I’ve never met a person
Speaking truth to power can work!
Every now and then there’s a social-science result that seems illuminating. Here’s one from the ’50s: Opinions and Social Pressure. It’s often very hard to buck social consensus when it’s uniform, but even a little moral support can go a long way. All the more reason for us all to blog!
Late modernity and humane economies
I’ve been reading the first couple of chapters of Wilhelm Roepke’s A Humane Economy, and they call up mixed feelings.
The book is generally a good one. It’s an attempt to place free-market economics in a civilizational setting. That setting is classical bourgeois society, especially as it existed in European villages and small towns … More ...
Universal Will
Something minor can sum up a situation. An example is a recent comment by George Will (referenced by Lawrence Auster) to the effect that America is founded on John Locke, not Jesus Christ, so America is not a Christian country and it’s illegitimate to disfavor Muslim immigration.
There we have the whole of what … More ...
More on the intellectual and practical need for God
Here’s another way of putting a point I made in my last entry: we understand things by seeing them in a setting. We also need to have some sort of general understanding of the world at large to orient our lives and thought as a whole. That understanding can’t involve an infinite series of ever … More ...
Is God an old man’s tale?
Charles Murray has an interview at the Gene Expression weblog in which he mentions that he has been an agnostic since his teens but is growing more and more inclined to thoughts of God as he grows older. His case is common enough to be worth comment. Why is it that once men pass adolescence … More ...
The Pope as conqueror of prejudice
On the face of it, these pro-homosexualists who don’t like “prejudice” have a point: Mixed message, and Two speeches, two days apart. If it’s true, as the Pope supposedly said, that we should all strive to “overcome preconceived ideas and prejudices, tear down barriers and eliminate contrasts that divide … so as to … More ...
Another blast from the past
Here’s another pre-9/11 goldie oldie, this one from the well-placed and highly-regarded Anthony Lewis, in the March 12, 1993 New York Times:
… More ...The murder of a doctor in Pensacola, Fla., tells us the essential truth about most anti-abortion activists. They are religious fanatics, who want to impose their version of God’s word on the