thoughts in and out of season
I have yet another piece at Catholic World Report, this one on equality and Catholicism. It points out that the progressive understanding of equality is at odds with Catholicism, good sense, good order, human well-being, and what not else, because it demands the abolition of all significant social institutions other than global markets … More ...
A correspondent, who had read my previous comments on women in Islam, asked whether I thought he was hysterical to say Islam enslaves women. He lives in a part of England where Muslims have recently become more of a presence, finds the routine sight of women in niqab shocking, and can’t understand why intellectual … More ...
So far as I can tell, “human rights” has become another name for compulsory PC managerial liberalism, with horror stories mixed in to stir the emotions and show how bad opponents are. I’ve commented recently on the ACLU view that “civil liberties” mean forcing a printer to suport a cause he finds appalling, and … More ...
The meaning of “liberty,” anno Domini 2004: Following ACLU Intervention, Refusal to Print Invites to Same-Sex Wedding Ends With Printer Apology and Agreement Not to Discriminate. The moral, as stated by the ACLU staff attorney: “Business owners are entitled to their private opinions about same-sex marriage, but discriminatory business practices are not permitted.” Freedom … More ...
In the forum, a reader draws attention to a recent piece by Melanie Phillips on “The coercive culture of human rights”. The piece was prompted by the release of a UK government White Paper (*.pdf format) about proposed comprehensive administrative arrangements for enforcing equality, rooting out discrimination, and generally doing what has to … More ...
Theodore Dalrymple has a rather slight but nonetheless helpful piece on what’s wrong with rights. His basic point seems to be that when something becomes a “right” there’s no further need for civility, reasonableness or mutual accommodation, so the more rights the more brutish social life becomes.
I’ve written some things denouncing the “tyranny of liberalism,” and here at Turnabout we’ve had a number of entries describing how that tendency is playing itself out in Canada. There’s a brief article at First Things worth reading as a summary of the latter point. A detail that reveals something about where things stand: the … More ...
The language of international diplomacy: Homosexuals Call Barbaric Church Purveyor of Nasty Dogmas. Apparently “gay rights” advocates were upset that the drive to establish international homosexual rights has stalled at the UN Commission on Human Rights, which is now meeting in Geneva. I’m naturally pleased the drive has stalled, but don’t really understand the … More ...
Here’s a useful FAQ on the Inquisition put together by a PhD student at Cambridge. The reputation and symbolic status of the Inquisition, it seems, has much more to do with the needs of those who appeal to the symbol than with the institution itself.
Leaving the bigotry and darkness of Old Spain for the … More ...
There was shock, horror and head-shaking in my late ’70s law school procedure class when we read a Supreme Court opinion to the effect that education wasn’t a fundamentally adversarial relationship and it didn’t make sense to insist on full adversarial procedure (notice, a hearing, right to counsel, right to confront witnessess etc.) before students … More ...