thoughts in and out of season
The issues are getting too weird for comment: the Libertarian Party is conducting a “Guns for Tots” program in Harlem to protest proposed legislation banning all toy guns, while the Village Voice notes that war toys being sold in Easter baskets often feature soldiers with light-colored hair.
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 ...
Steve Yates gives a lengthy summary of where educational policy is going in line with recent Federal legislation: FedEd: Education for Global Government. It’s a useful discussion, partly because his somewhat rambling presentation brings in a lot of the important background, like the centrality of world government, the notion of business-government “partnership” (a.k.a. corporatism), … More ...
Makes perfect sense: the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the leading UK charity dealing with child protection, has been spending its money on campaigning to outlaw parental smacking rather than protecting actual children. So they join the American Catholic bishops, who would rather pronounce on racism, foreign policy and social … More ...
A September 11 conspirator has been found guilty in Germany, and the court has imposed the maximum possible sentence—somewhat less than 2 days per victim.
“Free to be you and me,” which at bottom refers to the notion that the only moral connections among human beings are contract and the abstract solidarity of the tolerant and inclusive welfare state, has some unfortunate implications. Here’s one, which comes out of life as actually lived in our nation’s capital: Witnesses’ apathy caught … More ...
In a very idle moment I picked up the Thursday arts section of The New York Times to see what was up these days—I hadn’t looked at it for quite a while—and found 5 stories:
Paul Gottfried has a couple of complaints about the piece on traditionalism I posted here recently. He says I’m not going to be able to raise the armies of social-moral rearmament I’ll need to reconstitute a traditionalist order, and also finds fault with a couple of negative comments I made (in the piece and elsewhere) … More ...
Things are galloping along in Tony Blair’s Cool Britannia: More diverse, caring and single – the new face of Britain. According to recent census data, the minority ethnic population rose 50% in the past 10 years or so, while in the last 20 years the proportion of married-couple households fell from 64% to 45%. … More ...