Ignatian interview
There’s a longish interview with me at Ignatius Insight, the website of Ignatius Press.
Political theory
A Global EU? International Affairs and Contemporary Liberalism
Here is the text of a talk I gave at the H. L. Mencken Club conference.
A Global EU?
International Affairs and Contemporary Liberalism
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
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,
PC and the destruction of culture
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 ...
Do big tents go anywhere?
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 ...
Juan Donoso Cortes translation
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 ...
Reaching the zenith
Zenit, the international Catholic news agency, just published an interview with me about the topics I cover in my book.
Remembrance of Third Ways past
I just finished reading Allan Carlson’s Third Ways: How Bulgarian Greens, Swedish Housewives, and Beer-Swilling Englishmen Created Family-Centered Economies – And Why They Disappeared. It’s a really excellent collection of short case studies of 20th century attempts to create, recreate or maintain local, familial, distributist or agrarian economic forms in the face of commies, … More ...
Religion, secularity, totalities, totalitarians, etc.
I’ve added arguments and responses made in a discussion of the issue elsewhere to my recent entry on faith and reason. For convenience’s sake I’ve added them in the form of comments.
The discussion has clarified for me why modern secularists and antimodern traditionalists view each other as crazed tyrants. Each inhabits in thought a … More ...
The ship of state is never in neutral for long
According to George Weigel, the big issue in the fuss over the Society of Saint Pius X (the traditionalist group whose bishops just got de-excommunicated) is religious freedom: whether “coercive state power ought … be put behind the truth-claims of the Catholic Church or any other religious body.”
That obviously can’t be the issue. If … More ...