thoughts in and out of season
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 ...
Other ways to make the point I made in my most recent entry:
It should be obvious that in the modern world there’s no such thing as a pluralistic society. After all, life today is marked by pervasiveness, complexity and comprehensiveness of social cooperation, and those things require common habits, understandings and beliefs. Further, modern modes of production, exchange and regulation depend on standardization. The present day is … More ...
The managerial welfare state rolls on, extending its responsibilities into more and more of social life. Tony Blair wants to add attitudes and informal personal connections to what’s administered, and to treat criminal law as simply an aspect of social management: TB’s vision for Britain.
Blair’s program follows coherently from the widely accepted basic … More ...
Conservatives complain very forcefully, but aren’t as good at saying what they want. Unless we can say what we want, however, it will be hard to make clear to others or even ourselves what we’re doing or why anyone should go along with it. So here, for comment, is an initial sketch of an answer … More ...
I ran into a discussion of “why leftism” over at 2blowhards.com that was interesting because it dealt with the problem of the attractiveness of the Left. The discussion ended by proposing that the Right
“Claim art, claim food, claim pleasure, claim generosity.”
My response:
… More ...Good idea, but one that’s hard to carry out.
Art: The