thoughts in and out of season
UN experts criticize British record on social issues! After all, the Brits haven’t yet adopted comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation as required by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (145 signatories), even though they’ve had since 1976 to do it. Besides, the experts are “deeply troubled” by the increase in domestic violence. Who … More ...
Here’s something I wrote for a local newspaper a few years back. It didn’t get published then, so I thought I’d give it a second chance now:
… More ...Senator Moynihan noted not long ago [in The Public Interest] that in 1943 there were 73,000 persons on relief in New York City. In that year there
Libertarianism isn’t a cure-all, it’s just necessary (at least a lot of it is) for the protection of whatever makes life worth living.
If social justice—equality of outcome—is to be achieved the only things that can be allowed to count are things like formal qualifications that a bureaucracy can measure and administer. Otherwise control is … More ...
I keep getting things about family-related doings at the UN. Here’s one about American resistance to efforts by the EU, Canada and the Latin American countries[!] to redefine the family and make abortion a right for teenagers.
Doesn’t the fact that these things have become questions of international politics show that something extremely strange—and wrong—has … More ...
It seems unlikely that those who prosecuted Brigitte Bardot for criticising Islam or Le Pen for calling gas chambers a “detail” will now go against critics of Christianity, even though a new compilation shows that during the last century 45,000,000 Christians were killed for their religion.
Death makes us all equal, but some are more … More ...
A friend points out an NRO article by Rod Dreher detailing Fortuyn’s platform. All very mild. The most interesting point is that Article 1 of the Dutch Constitution forbids discrimination—by anyone—on “religion, belief, political opinion, race or sex, or on any other grounds whatsoever.” So in Holland you have to carry on all relations with … More ...
Social justice requires irreligion; the reverse is true as well. Men need to feel they live in a comprehensible world. If God’s running the show then that’s taken care of, so government can become a matter of what is practically expedient in a situation that is fundamentally well-ordered. Perfection of outcome is not needed because … More ...
As things are now, the problem with the constitutional separation of church and state is that it assumes that government is not the vehicle of moral life. That assumption is inconsistent with the concept of social justice. “Social justice” means that government supervises how things end up. If government is responsible for what happens, … More ...