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What would be necessary for the rebirth of traditional society?

Traditional society is society oriented toward transcendent good. The two are inseparable. To say a good—the good life, say—has a transcendent element is to say we can’t make what it is altogether explicit or know it sufficiently on our own. If that is so, however, … More ...

It’s not just the unabomber and the guy who killed Fortuyn: environmentalist terrorism is real.

Lest we forget, here’s a catalogue of statements about Jenin from what is laughingly called the British quality press. The writer himself goes a bit over the top, though, when he says

this misreporting was an assault on the truth on a par with the New York Times‘s Walter Duranty’s infamous cover-up of the

The basic problem of American conservatism is that it appeals to tradition while refusing to accept anything but liberty, equality and universal reason as authoritative.

The refusal is of course more apparent than real, since conservatives define themselves as such by their resistance to the logical implications of liberty and equality. Nonetheless, the unwillingness or … More ...

Now online: Anthony de Jasay’s The State, one of the best libertarian books. “What would you do if you were the state?”

I suppose the point should be made explicitly—the contradiction between “tolerance” and “multiculturalism” in the Fortuyn case illustrates a genuine insoluble contradiction within liberalism. There’s no “true liberalism” that can resolve it.

Both tolerance and multiculturalism say that one system of habit and attitude is as good as another. What happens though when two systems, … More ...

If America was not well founded, what then? Not that it is a bad country, or an unworthy object of loyalty, or that an American should not look upon its history as his own. A country has to be mostly good to exist at all, and if it has problems we owe it the concern … More ...

So Fortuyn’s party is gaining, and even suing other politicians under Holland’s hate-crime laws for inciting his assassination, tra-la! Meanwhile, it appears that in addition to his other oddities he was openly pro-pedophilia, not that it mattered to anyone of consequence over there.

Who will the cultural winners be in the age of the Internet?

It seems to undermine centralization, so it may make “social justice” less of a threat. On the other hand, it puts everybody and everything in immediate touch and so puts everything somewhat on a par, with exchange (that is, money) and arbitrary choice … More ...

Melanie Phillips, the British journalist, has made the Fortuyn murder an occasion for commenting on contradictions within liberalism. Her article is a good start, but she has a way to go before she escapes from the contradictions she discusses. It’s worth discussing the piece from that point of view, because it is representative … More ...