thoughts in and out of season
A commenter asks those who post here “What does your ideal America look like?” The question’s worth discussing.
From the standpoint of specific practical political goals, I don’t really have an ideal America. No society is ideal, since every society depends on the cooperation of imperfect human beings. The specifics of what’s good politically depend … More ...
In America politics is more and more a matter of social metaphysics:
The logic of antidiscrimination law continues to work itself out: scholar proposes compulsory “tolerance” within churches. The argument’s no joke if you’ve thought through the implications of existing legal principles regarding equality of opportunity and access and the separation of religion from public discourse. Whatever the activity, you have to rearrange it to make … More ...
One issue raised by the current sleaze involving New Jersey Governor McGreevey is the issue of homosexuals hiring homosexuals. I have some slight personal experience of the thing, since an Episcopal diocese to which I used to be connected is run by a gay mafia that looks out for its own. Others have noticed it … More ...
Canada Revenue Agency is warning churches to be silent on moral issues when they become political issues. So they have to keep quiet at present about “gay marriage,” at least if they’re on the wrong side. It’s not clear how far the principle reaches. Do the Catholics lose their tax exemption if they deny communion … More ...
With reference to the supposed liberal respect for the consent of the people, it’s worth pointing out that the attempt to force universal abortion rights on the whole world on international human rights grounds is going ahead full tilt, with a UN Committee developing its plans establishing abortion on demand for women and girls … More ...
Right-wingers puzzle over how to explain liberalism and the Left. Where do they come from—a sheltered upbringing, arrested emotional development, scientism, a general lack of realism, managerial class self-interest? Some even look at modern culture and politics and conclude that the love of equality is simply the love of degradation and death, so it’s the … More ...
A correspondent raised the issue of the historic identity of the American people, and whether it depended on the exclusion of nonwhites and in particular blacks. He suggested (a bit modishly, I thought) that to the extent concrete ethnicity became less important during the course of our history a sort of constructed pseudo-ethnicity based on … More ...
The uniform view of the cultural Left—which includes everything that counts as mainstream from the standpoint of our bureaucracies of truth—is that nods by Republican leaders toward traditionalist cultural concerns prove that the GOP has been hijacked by fundamentalist wackos. That’s not rhetoric and spin, things really look to them that way. It’s clear … More ...
It’s a mistake for conservatives to stake their case on the appeal to freedom and equality as ultimate principles that is the stuff of political rhetoric today. The appeal is self-defeating, both for conservatives and for anyone intelligently attached to those goals. Their logic is innately unlimited, and the attempt to put them into effect … More ...