thoughts in and out of season
I’ve said that multicultural is really a-cultural, since culture that cannot be public and authoritative is not culture but private habit and taste. Naturally, that description simplifies things a bit. No human group can function without common habits and understandings that its members are entitled to rely on. Multicultural society therefore has its own culture, … More ...
I expected there would be more “others” with this poll than previous polls, and so far I’ve been right. I do hope that if you vote that way you’ll say what you think the true account is. People are puzzled by “inclusiveness,” so their theories are all over the place, and a list of some … More ...
A while back I noted the oddity of Catholic neocon George Weigel praising Philadelphia in the 50s as “a town of ethnic neighborhoods in which Catholic kids unselfconsciously identified themselves by parish … dang, it was great” and in a few lines without explanation attacking those who wanted to maintain ethnic and religious boundaries in … More ...
Melanie Phillips gives a pop version of objections to attempts by scientists and their hangers-on and popularizers to claim that something like modern natural science can explain everything.
The basic problem, I think, is that modern natural science achieves its amazing power through clarity and concentration, which means it achieves it through narrowness. It can’t … More ...
Every movement needs high-flown rhetoric, and trad rightwingery can’t be any different. Inspired by what seems voguish I’ve put together a few phrases for my own “I have a dream” speech. Additions are welcome.
… More ...I dream of an America that is a normal country.
I dream of an America that is not an all-purpose fantasy,
I just went to a concert put on by a musician who lives in the neighborhood that put me in mind of a comment I made a while back on a William Wegman exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum:
… More ...He has loads of talent and industry, he seems like a perfectly normal guy, and his stuff
When “freedom” means fluid standards and relationships, it puts everything up for grabs. When everything is up for grabs the grabby get everything. Tastes differ, but that doesn’t seem so great to me.
For some reason grabbiness is thought a specifically capitalistic vice. In fact, the point of private property is that it limits grabbiness … More ...
After public complaints, the German government has finally pulled a sex-ed booklet that promoted conduct that came close to incestuous pedophilia. Since this is a G-rated weblog, you’ll have to click on the links to get the details, which were startling enough to make me go and find the booklet itself. Not surprisingly, the … More ...
When people at the New York Times, even those very who are very senior, open up and tell us how they feel about something I’m mostly impressed by how thoughtless, uncritical, and confused they are.
One recent example was Linda Greenhouse’s blather, in a speech on the occasion of some award she got … More ...
A result of the abolition of culture through commercialism, ideology and modern understandings of justice and rationality is that people get deprived of worthwhile ideals of conduct. From the standpoint of the New York Times and the weblog Gene Expression, it therefore appears that the choices for young people are (1) nerdishness, which is … More ...