thoughts in and out of season
I’ve been reading The Problem of Democracy, a new translation of a short book by the French writer Alain de Benoist.
“Democracy,” even more than “inclusiveness” or “social justice,” is viewed as an incontestable fundamental good today. Everybody seems to agree it’s how things have to be. Nonetheless—or maybe therefore—most people don’t think about … More ...
My review of Daniel Mahoney’s recent book has provoked a response from Professor Mahoney, which appears (along with my rejoinder) in the current (March 2011) issue of First Things.
That’s the title of my review of Daniel Mahoney’s The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order: Defending Democracy Against Its Modern Enemies and Immoderate Friends in the current issue of First Things.
Over at Alternative Right I had a discussion with a participant who—like a lot of people who comment there—tended toward a sort of action-oriented tribal relativism. His basic thought seemed to be that social order doesn’t go very deep but comes out of crude drives plus choice, with this and that expedient added in to … More ...
[The following review appeared in the Spring 2010 issue of Modern Age.]
The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West, by Lee Harris (New York: Basic Books, 2007)
What do we make of radical Islam? Of Islam in general? Of the present state of the West? It is easier not to … More ...
Here’s Hollywood’s take on the meaning of the Battle of the Bulge in 1949, four years after the shooting stopped:
(Battleground, 1949)
“We must never again let any force dedicated to … a super idea or a super anything become strong enough to impose itself … We must be smart enough and tough … More ...
In his comments on my discussion of alternate modernities, Paul Gottfried observes that in our present situation there’s no educational program, system of alliances, or political and cultural strategy that seems likely to get us out of the hole we’re in.
I agree. If we start with what I called the modern “attempt to … More ...
Bruce Charlton has been churning out post after post on political correctness. (See his weblog entries posted November 1 through November 3.)
One of his themes is the relation between “old left” bureaucratism and “new left” hedonism. The former runs the show, the latter makes things a bit more fun for those who run it.… More ...
A discussion group I’m part of (The H. L. Mencken Club) is thinking of putting on a conference on the “conservative canon”—books that have been, or should be, central to conservatism in America.
The thought seems to be that the old booklists have become stale. Time has passed, conditions have changed, and books … More ...
Here’s a talk I gave yesterday at the annual conference of the H. L. Mencken Club.
… More ...The title of my talk is PC: The Cultural Antichrist.
It’s an odd title, but political correctness is an odd tendency. It’s a bit uncanny. It doesn’t fit in with how we normally think about things. That’s why