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A correspondent criticized my statement in Science, Rationality and the Good to the effect that “‘rationality’ is itself an evaluative term, and to say a proposition is rational is to say that it should be believed—an evaluative statement”:

In science, a proposition worthy of belief needs to comport with reality. A proposition comports with reality

Found on the web:

• No big surprises here: cohabiting couples aren’t likely to marry, and “gay marriage” weakens marriage. If there’s something special about sex and the sexes that’s basic to how the world works, so there are rights and wrongs about it, then marriage makes sense. If it’s all idiosyncracy and personal

More odds and ends:

• There’s an interview at Newsmax with Paul Gottfried, mostly about Israel, Jews and Western liberal weirdness, that strikes me as sensible. It’s intended to clear the air, especially on the Right, rather than propose one policy or another for the Middle East.
• For 30 years we’ve had one report after

Current events update:

• Offshore outsourcing may start to hit home for aspiring members of the ruling class. Law firms are talking about moving junior associate functions to India.
• For those with other ambitions: About.com seems to need a guide for Conservative Politics. Anybody want to step right into a major right-wing website?
• Here’s

Like most right-wingers I’m rather down on George W. Bush, but I did find the Bush Conspiracy Theory Generator rather amusing.

In his book The Free Press, recently republished, Hilaire Belloc gives a memorable explanation why the mass media make people stupid:

Instead of an organic impression formed at leisure in the comparison of many human sources, the reader obtains a mechanical one. At the same moment myriads of other men receive the same

What do you do with political terms? In the interview, I said that libertarianism and conservatism are theoretically opposed, because one makes freedom the final standard and one does not, but that on practical issues today they are often consistent. I also suggested that many people who call themselves libertarian are mostly conservative philosophically but … More ...

After the 2Blowhards interview I got into a discussion with one of the commenters on his own blog that began with a request that I respond to a paper he had written on Emerson and related topics. Here’s an edited version that tries to pick out the parts most likely to interest readers of Turnabout… More ...

American conservatives long admired England as the homeland of Civilized Standards. Russell Kirk wrote a whole book on America’s British Culture because he wanted to refute multiculturalism. It’s worth noting though how their ideas of civilized standards now operate:

• They’ve awarded their top literary award, the Booker Prize, to an unusually disgusting piece of illiterature

Keeping track of stories the press won’t cover helps maintain one’s grip on reality, but people who complain about spiked stories don’t always have the firmest grip themselves. Here though are some items that seem believable:

• John Lott complains that the press simply won’t cover defensive gun use.
• Wesley J. Smith complains the mainstream