thoughts in and out of season
From a traditionalist conservative point of view, the modern world looks doomed. Its insistence on rooting out all social institutions not based on free-floating choice and formalized expertise—that’s what “inclusiveness,” its highest moral principle, is all about—leaves no place for the settled informal connections and understandings that make possible decent human relations or even ordinary … More ...
In the ’60s we had the “television generation,” the first generation to grow up watching TV. Today we have the “Internet generation.” The change in ways of finding out about the world ought to mean something, even though the effects are diffuse and so hard to interpret. Still, other people have theories on the subject, … More ...
The ’60s, bracketed as they were by the school prayer and abortion decisions, stand for definitive public rejection of the transcendent in favor of a wholly this-worldly understanding of reality. In the absence of a superior point of reference, the social order became the ultimate moral reality and human choice the ultimate authority. For … More ...
Can the internet and traditionalism get along? On the face of it, the net sums up the most extreme features of the modern world. It destroys particular connections by making everything equally present to everything else. With all things in the same setting and position, the meaning and significance of things has nowhere to establish … More ...
Is there such a thing as “natural society”? The difference between the traditional and modernist outlook is that the former believes in it and the latter does not, at least if “nature” is taken to refer to anything substantial and not simply to content-free abstractions like freedom and equality. The traditional standpoint is that basic … More ...
A point raised in my last entry, that the realization that social engineering isn’t possible makes nonsense of a lot of current political, social and religious thought, is worth expanding. One implication is that a “top down” understanding of subsidiarity, in which government watches to see if families or whatever are doing what they should, … More ...
The feature of transnational institutions that will save us from the worst of their ambition to reconstruct us is their irredeemable inefficiency and corruption. It’s not something that will go away because of better management or appeals to abstract global ideals. Management is secondary, and generalized ideals are good fallbacks but can’t carry the … More ...
“Subsidiarity” is a basic concept of Catholic social teaching. according to which “a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co-ordinate its activity with the … More ...
An example of leftish puzzlement about religion and politics that’s more intelligent and well-meant than the sort of thing one sees in the New York Times:
… More ...The right question, I think, is not whether religion has an undue influence, but why it is that the current flourishing of religious faith has, for the first
Social conservatives complain that their issues—abortion, “gay marriage” and whatnot—aren’t taken nearly as seriously by politicians on their side as by those on the other side. For Republicans, it seems, those issues are mostly vote getters that can be compromised or negotiated away, while for Democrats they’re religious absolutes that take precedence over everything. Leftists… More ...