thoughts in and out of season
My comments on what an “alternative right” might be have provoked enough comment at Alternative Right to call for continuing the discussion.
Jack Donovan has called for a rag-tag alliance of right-wingers, Richard Spencer for a coalition against bad things. Both can serve a function, and I agree with the project. Still, the direction of … More ...
The respectable right is respectable because it accepts the principles of liberalism and can’t offer serious resistance to liberal conclusions.
That’s why a less respectable “alternative right” is needed. But what is the alternative that would do better? People have been looking for a good way to resist liberalism for a long time, and judging … More ...
Something I wrote, an analysis of liberalism, libertarianism, and conservatism, was enough to provoke a libertarian blogger (“larryniven”) to murder fantasies. I decided to address his concerns, but our exchange went nowhere. So I decided to reconstruct it, along with a short side exchange with a mainstream social liberal from Australia, into the … More ...
A friend sent me something he was writing on the political prospects for protectionist legislation. I sent him the following response, which I’ve edited a bit and relates to much more than protectionism:
… More ...In general, your discussion follows the interest-group, competing political party, voter sovereignty model of political life in a modern democracy.
I sometimes
There’s a longish interview with me at Ignatius Insight, the website of Ignatius Press.
Here is the text of a talk I gave at the H. L. Mencken Club conference.
October 31, 2009
The other speakers have discussed foreign policy by reference to specifically American tendencies. I will discuss something that I think is more general, advanced liberalism—the dominant … More ...
Yet another review, this one by Carl Olson in Catholic World Report. It’s longer than average (two three-column pages) and quite favorable:
… More ...The Tyranny of Liberalism … is the work of an imaginative conservative who offers frank criticism and expresses the truth about authentic values and the permanent things with notable clarity, unusual insight,
Here’s a chapter from 2008 for a projected collection of essays. The book never got published, but here’s what I wrote:
PC and the Destruction of Culture
by James Kalb
Political correctness is an odd tendency. It does not fit in with how people normally think about things, so no one knows what to make … More ...
Evan McLaren notes that I mostly deal with grand issues and tend toward a “big tent” approach, at least among right-wingers, and wonders whether that makes sense.
I think my approach has been helpful theoretically, for getting an overall understanding of issues. If you give free play to a lot of different concerns, and don’t … More ...
A friend has forwarded to me his translation of Letter to Cardinal Fornari On the Errors of Our Time by Juan Donoso Cortes and given permission to make it available on the web. At the time the letter was written Cardinal Fornari was in charge of a commission studying modern errors for Pope Pius IX … More ...