thoughts in and out of season
In France, an MP is fined and denounced vehemently for criticizing homosexuality, and the Culture Minister wants him kicked out of the party. In this country we mostly don’t fine people for saying the wrong thing, we just re-educate them or put them in therapy. And then there’ll always be an England, … More ...
I thought I’d post a couple of comments I made at Brussels Journal about the slow-motion war being carried out by European elites against their own societies and people. The first is more or less self-explanatory:
… More ...Just a minor rant on “multiculturalism”:
Naturally, it can’t exist as a situation in which several cultures exist intermingled
What does it mean that the leader of the Senate Democrats plans to oppose John Roberts because of insufficient demonstrated commitment to “Democrats’ core causes, racial and gender equality”? Apparently, that (1) people, especially sexually normal white men, abuse others if left to themselves, so (2) a comprehensive system of supervision backed by force is … More ...
Just recently I learned the term “astroturf,” an operative’s expression for a fake grass-roots movement, so I suppose I’m lucky to run so quickly into an example. It seems that in an unguarded speech last week a former employee of the Pew Charitable Trusts boasted that the “popular concern” that helped induce Congress to … More ...
Have emperors always gone about in their new birthday suits? Maybe there are always contradictions between obvious realities and the official stories everybody reputable agrees to. Or maybe there’s something about an expertised formally educated mass-media society, in which something can only become a fact or issue if the right people recognize it as such, … More ...
Martin Peretz notes in his publication The New Republic that liberalism is “bookless and dying.” He’s right, of course. A political movement with no guides in sight other than consultants, careerists and cranks isn’t going to go anywhere. The problem is that the lack of thought and vision isn’t peculiar to the Left. … More ...
This does seem encouraging, although there’s a long way to go. One of the ‘ulema is putting it on the line and debating imprisoned radicals as to the Islamic correctness of their understanding of jihad:
… More ...“If you can convince us that your ideas are justified by the Koran, then we will join you in
Has public discussion come to an end? Bush and his supporters want to transform the world by force to eliminate tyranny and establish freedom and democracy everywhere. The transformation of the world is to parallel the accelerated tranformation of the United States through effectively open borders. It’s not clear why any of that makes sense, … More ...
Rocco Buttiglione acted in a more principled way than Larry Summers when he said the wrong thing, but was he principled enough? I don’t think Summers would have knuckled under to any pressure group whatever that threatened to make things difficult for him. At Stalin’s show trials the Old Bolsheviks didn’t confess simply because … More ...