thoughts in and out of season
Free institutions, free men, free thought—something of the sort is needed for tradition. Tradition isn’t forced, administered, or intentionally created. It grows out of experience in ways that can’t be predicted, and it’s completely at odds with rationalized control based on explicit standards.
Nonetheless, tradition also requires subordination. It requires that we view ourselves as … More ...
To be like one thing is to be different from another. The things that divide are therefore the same as the things that unite. That’s so obviously true that it’s hard to imagine how anyone could ever have seen “inclusiveness” as a possible ideal.
If it’s presented as an ideal there’s a shell game going … More ...
More thoughts on liberalism! (Sorry for devoting so much space to the topic, but it’s better than pederasty and prison rape.)
Liberalism wins arguments each step of the way, because it is concerned only with the articulate. It refers to the inarticulate as prejudice, stereotype, obscurantism, and so on. It therefore has no interest in … More ...
What would be necessary for the rebirth of traditional society?
Traditional society is society oriented toward transcendent good. To say a good—the good life, say—has a transcendent element is to say we can’t make what it is altogether explicit or know it sufficiently on our own. If that is so, however, we must rely on … More ...
Is liberalism politically necessary, because there’s too little agreement on basics? That’s what is said. Any attempt to enforce non-liberal views, special recognition of a particular religion for example, would be hopelessly divisive and require unacceptable coercion. Religious establishments have been in decline for a long time, and serious attempts to re-impose them today soon … More ...
Traditionalist conservatism has an air of paradox in America. It reinterprets or rejects things often identified as American in the name of understandings people find unfamiliar. After all, many would ask, haven’t Americans always idealized science, progress, material prosperity and individual success? Aren’t we a nation of immigrants from a variety of traditions? Isn’t it … More ...
Traditionalist conservatism has an air of paradox in America. It reinterprets or rejects things often identified as American in the name of understandings people find unfamiliar. After all, many would ask, haven’t Americans always idealized science, progress, material prosperity and individual success? Aren’t we a nation of immigrants from a variety of traditions? Isn’t it … More ...
A traditionalist is someone who accepts tradition as authoritative.
That’s not someone who believes that tradition is a good source of suggestions or an acceptable guide when no better can be had. Nor is it someone who thinks that all traditions must always be followed. It’s someone who recognizes that tradition knows more than any … More ...
How did we get where we are in America today? Was it in the cards from the beginning? Right-wingers sometimes argue about whether America was well-founded. It’s very awkward of course if it wasn’t, but the question must be considered soberly.
The strongest argument that it was not is that the supreme political power the … More ...
Thoughts on politics and Christian orthodoxy:
Political modernism is the attempt to establish a wholly rational and this-worldly social order. The world is to be re-created and redeemed through man’s will. Political modernism thus substitutes faith in man for faith in God. As such, it is a denial of the nature of God, man, and … More ...