thoughts in and out of season
Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment
Dear Group Members,
I want to share my article with you. This is about the link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues. The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful … More ...
The following review of Christopher J. Insole, The Politics of Human Frailty: A Theological Defense of Political Liberalism (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005) appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Telos.
What is liberalism and is it good or bad? Its pervasiveness makes it difficult to gain the perspective needed to … More ...
A friend wrote to ask what I thought of various academic attempts to try to avoid objections to liberalism that are based on the liberal tendency, now out of fashion, to claim that liberalism should rule because it’s based on universally valid rational principles of some sort. My response:
… More ...The attempts you mention basically claim
A correspondent asks what metaphysical liberalism, as “the denial of the Good as a self-sufficient entity which exists independent of any individual’s personal preferences,” has to do with “the modern Left’s hysterical denial of differences between (and in some cases among) different racial sexual and myriad other groups.”
My response:
… More ...To my mind, the craziness
The fundamental question of political legitimacy is the nature and purpose of authority, and thus the nature of man, the world, moral obligation, and the human good—in other words, which religion is correct. Liberalism cannot get by without answering that question, but it answers it indirectly, by claiming moral ignorance. We do not know what … More ...
What does it mean that something as idiotic as the Da Vinci Code has had a strong effect on how people answer pollsters’ questions about Christianity and Catholicism? (No, I haven’t read the book or seen the movie, and yes, I feel entitled to dismiss them as idiotic anyway.)
Some possibilities:
An old friend, who considers herself a liberal, asked why I classified W as one. It really seemed batty to her although she could see that the “big spender” label would apply. My reply (somewhat edited):
… More ...He’s a liberal because he thinks he’s called on to reconstruct things to bring about a universal order in
Last weekend I attended commencement exercises at a very prestigious Northeastern liberal arts college distinguished by its selectiveness, its commitment to social progress, and its extraordinarily beautiful and lavishly funded campus. I was struck by the unity of view of all the speakers. Here’s the gist of what I heard:
Is anyone interested in reorganizing the Knights Templar (or a similar order) on a strictly Catholic Traditionalist basis? What else could counteract the general process of abysmal civilizational decline and cleanse the age of its excess filth? The Atlanteans of Plato lost their divine nature through repeated crossing with corrupt humanity and worship of the … More ...
Dear Mr Kalb and Fellow Readers,
We are fighting a retreat based on timid leadership in legislatures and in Websites. The liberal Senate and the nearly liberal House are nearly always proposing amnesty etc. The House might or might not hold firm in refusing to compromise on enforcement only, but do not count on it … More ...