thoughts in and out of season
The relation between civilization and cultural revisionism is paradoxical. On the one hand, revisionism visibly contributes to a decline in civilizational standards — rising crime, declining standards of culture, and increasing crudity and violence in daily life. On the other hand, the most educated, cultured and prosperous places are the most revisionist. The moderately pro-family … More ...
How seriously should anyone take complaints that American society is “totalitarian”? After all, people here can mostly say and do what they want. Elections are free, the press uncensored, the police and courts comparatively honest and law-abiding, person and property generally secure. Education, religion and culture are as independent of outside control as … More ...
What does it mean that our society has officially rejected the notion of a common moral reality in which all participate? (See, e.g., Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992): “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the … More ...
“Neoconservatism” is a contentious term, but it’s useful as a description of a movement that attempts to moderate and so stabilize liberal modernity. In particular, neoconservatism accepts both the modern aspiration to reform all things and bring them in line with clear universal principles, and the liberal choice of freedom, equality and efficiency as the … More ...
Philosophical pragmatism is mostly the habit of changing the subject if a line of thought makes one uncomfortable. It’s the collapse of the coherence theory of truth into a comfort theory of truth. Such a view can have the appearance of great reasonableness, of not wanting to take things too far. A consequence of the … More ...
What to do about AIDS in Africa? Easy, says a New York Times Op-Ed by Kati Marton of the International Woman’s Health Coalition. It’s mostly a disease of powerless and victimized women, so the answer is empowerment: female condoms and microbicides, and programs that train women how to resist sexual predators. Sex and disease are … More ...
Current departures such as “gay marriage” are often defended as examples of the natural development of institutions with the times. To oppose them is said to be an arbitrary attempt to freeze social development at a particular point. Such claims don’t hold up. While it’s true that changing conceptions, interests, and ideals have repeatedly led … More ...
Here’s an initial sketch of a discussion of traditionalist conservatism that attempts to develop it out of a general analysis of social organization. I would be very grateful for any comments.
… More ...Understanding Conservatism and Tradition [8th state]
To understand conservatism we must understand how conservatives differ from leftists and libertarians.
Basic oppositions in politics usually
What is knowledge? The question has been supremely important in modern times. Before we could know about the world, it seemed to Bacon, Descartes and others, we should criticize our ways of knowing. Our investigations should free themselves of the things that lead to error. They should be exact and impersonal, based on logic and … More ...
Some thoughts suggested by current discussions of racism and antisemitism:
The natural outlook is that there are a variety of peoples—East Asians, Fukienese peasants, Westerners, Jews, Irishmen—that are distinct enough to possess qualities that might be good or bad. Since qualities differ, it is natural to feel more or less attracted or tied to one … More ...