thoughts in and out of season
In its boring way, USA Today takes offense because pilots want to be armed in case of a hijacking. Let the pros take care of it—like Norm Mineta, whose major contribution so far has been to insist that Arab men and Russian babushkas get watched equally.
The point, of course, is political and not technical. … More ...
It’s somewhat good news of course that UN Child Summit negotiations are stymied. “Permanently dead” would be better, though. Do you want the UN looking after any young people you know?
There’s something terribly wrong with Arab public life. I’ve liked most of the Arabs I’ve met—better, in fact, than most Israelis. Whatever human weaknesses and vices the Arabs have though they seem to turn into political theories. It has nothing to do with intelligence or education. Here, for example, are the comments of the Chairman … More ...
Do the best things always come first? Every movement seems to produce its classics at the beginning like Athena springing full-grown from the head of Zeus. (Sorry if that’s too high-flown!)
That applies to modernity too. For us the seventeenth century is the century of genius, because it was when modernity achieved full development in … More ...
What kind of conservatism is needed today? Whatever it is will have to be complicated, or at least different from that of the past. Conservatism as such is simply the desire to keep what’s good in an existing way of life. Conservatives today, however, have seen liberalism transform the world they once loved beyond recognition… More ...
The Left continues all-victorious because the serious issues were conceded long ago. “Inclusiveness” and “tolerance,” taken seriously, radically weaken all institutions other than universal markets and universal rational bureaucracies. Nonetheless, it is now fundamental that they are necessary basic standards for any tolerable society. Rejecting them has become unspeakable, and for most people unthinkable; all … More ...
Does it make sense to talk of PC liberalism as a grand conceptual system that’s inevitable because of something in modern thought? Isn’t it just the way things happen to have turned out? For example, some people view multiculturalism as Hitler’s bequest to us—if there had been no Nazis, they say, there would have been … More ...
Some conventional wisdom on the scandals in the Catholic Church: Church Itself Sowed Seeds of Scandal. It’s by a man named Oliver McTernan who ought to know what that wisdom is—after 30 years in active ministry promoting social justice he’s now an associate at the Harvard Center for International Affairs.
… More ...“The other [image of
Toward a Newer Right: the Right has always been a response to the Left, an attempt to maintain traditional affirmations in the face of leftist negations. As a result the Right, although essentially positive because it wanted to preserve something, has appeared negative because its main activity has been opposing leftist initiatives.
Hegelian-sounding aphorism of the day:
Leftism asserts the negation; liberalism negates the assertion.
Thus, the Left is communist and wants to destroy the heritage of the past. It asserts that the past must be negated. Liberals, on the other hand, are anti-anti-communist and simply deny that the heritage of the past should be asserted.
Why … More ...