thoughts in and out of season
The contributors to the weblog Secular Right: Reality & Reason have put together a sort of credo, What is the Secular Right? Here it is:
… More ...We believe that conservative principles and policies need not be grounded in a specific set of supernatural claims. Rather, conservatism serves the ends of “Human Flourishing,” what the Greeks termed
I was looking at We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (1960) by John Courtney Murray. For those who don’t know much about him, Murray was a Catholic priest and theologian who
… More ...was especially known for his efforts to reconcile Catholicism and religious pluralism, religious freedom, and the American political order.
A Swedish correspondent wrote to ask why ideas of historical and cultural community never seem to go anywhere today. My response continues some of the thoughts touched on in the recent discussion of social conservatism:
… More ...The basic problem I think is that such ideas depend on notions of what one is, and the modern
Takimag has published the following piece I wrote on social conservatism. Unfortunately, they no longer allow comments, which was always half the fun of publishing there.
Is Social Conservatism Necessary?
by James Kalb
January 15, 2009
Is Social Conservatism Necessary?
The voices of conventional wisdom are telling us once again that the Right should … More ...
I’ve been doing some radio interviews to promote my book, maybe a couple dozen in total. Here are some I have links to:
Here’s the text of a talk I gave at the first annual conference of The H. L. Mencken Club. (Actually, I only had time to present the first 3/5 or so of the talk. The remainder was mostly a rehash of previous talks, though, so maybe it’s just as well.)
James … More ...
I expanded the lecture I gave last summer at Gardone into a series of three essays that can be found in the October, November, and December issues of The Angelus. You can also read a Google docs version of the series as a single document.
Here’s the text of remarks regarding “The Future of Conservatism” I made on a panel at an ISI conference at Yale.
I’ve got 15 minutes to talk about the future of conservatism, so all I can do is present one part of that future in bold strokes.
Conservatism has big problems today. When you’ve … More ...
People have been asking me questions about my book, and I’m going to be giving some talks and radio interviews over the next month or two, so I thought I’d start putting together a Q&A on issues likely to be raised. Comments, criticisms, complaints and additions are welcome. The Q&A is likely to keep growing, … More ...