thoughts in and out of season
I’ve also been reading a bit of The Technological Society by Jaques Ellul. He’s good on presenting technology as an increasingly all-embracing system with its own demands. He tends though to view technological rationality as solely concerned with the ever-greater perfection of means. It seems to me that to explain what’s going on around … More ...
An objection to the view that advanced liberalism is simply an expression of the technological outlook is that technology can be turned to any purpose. The Nazis had a technology of war and oppression, Islamic terrorists have a technology of terror, and televangelists (it is said) have a technology of making money while spreading the … More ...
Another example of how people act when their metaphysics are challenged: Status of Catholic Church in Spain Threatened. The Catholic Church in Spain has protested a citizenship education program that promotes full normalization of homosexuality. Professor Gregorio Peces-Barba MartÃnez, apparently the socialist government’s main theoretician, has responded with a newspaper column in which he … More ...
People say religion is irrational and religious people are crazy. Sometimes that’s so, of course, but the same could be said of secular people and their views. The truth of the matter is that everyone has metaphysical principles that determine how he understands the world, and when someone insists on something without evidence, or even … More ...
For several years the following text was distributed monthly on the usenet newsgroup alt.revolution.counter. Distribution was abandoned at some point in 2001, when it seemed that discussions had altogether petered out. So here it is, for old time’s sake:
… More ...FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
- What is the purpose of alt.revolution.counter?
The discussion of counterrevolutionary perspectives on
At bottom, conservatism is simply attachment to a specific society. It is therefore a disposition to maintain the features of the society that make it what it is: the particular people who make it up, the beliefs, commitments and institutions that order it, and the concrete features that define its character and distinguish it … More ...
Liberalism governs by pretending not to govern, and claims to do the opposite of what in fact it does. An example touched on in recent discussions is multiculturalism, which claims to celebrate all cultures—that is, all informal and inherited ways— but in fact empowers each of them to deprive the others of all significant influence. … More ...
I thought I’d post a recent to-and-fro from rec.arts.books. (I still look at the discussion groups on USENET now and then, and occasionally post something). It’s the answer I always give to a question people ask repeatedly. I’m not sure whether that makes it a golden oldie or a snooze, but it’s my weblog … More ...
Here’s a CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) podcast on Radical Orthodoxy that includes extended soundbites from John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock. What they say sounds sensible enough to me, although they’re academics so it’s all quite theoretical and respectable-sounding, and Milbank at any rate has an ingrained attachment to socialism.
In a way, their views seem … More ...
I’ve noted that an implicit motivation for promoting mass third-world immigration is divide et impera: as Federalist 10 makes clear, the more people, and the more diverse they are, the higher the position of those on top and the less likely those down below will be able to get together and cause problems … More ...