Needed: more pith and vinegar
I’ve a piece calling for a return of the right wing aphorism up at Crisis Magazine.
Society and culture
Tolerance that swallows itself
My review of The Intolerance of Tolerance, a book by reformed theologian D. A. Carson, is available at The University Bookman.
The triumph of stupidity
I’ve a new piece up at Crisis Magazine on that alarming topic.
Beauty, saving the world, and similar topics
I have a short piece up at Solidarity Hall, a site that seems fairly new. It’s a comment on a much longer piece by Mark Signorelli, his review of the book Beauty Will Save the World by Gregory Wolfe.
How to remember 9/11?
The current issue of First Things has a piece by R. R. Reno that’s worth reading on The Failed 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center. The basic issue it raises is that it’s odd to have a large impressive memorial in a location that’s as prominent as the WTC, only to have the memorial … More ...
Two films with food mysticism (spoiler alert!)
A blogger’s complaints about foodies put me in mind of a couple of award-winning and actually quite good movies I saw recently about food and drink as religion, Sideways and Babette’s Feast.
Sideways is set in present-day California. It’s about confused people with sordid lives for whom wine gives access to transcendent reality, or … More ...
Escape from the antiworld
Here’s the text of a lecture I presented at the 2011 Roman Forum conference at Lake Garda in Italy:
Escape from the Antiworld
James Kalb
Presented at the Roman Forum conference in Gardone Riviera, Italy,
July 6, 2011
This conference raises a variety of questions. What is the present situation? How should we deal with … More ...
From living order to transcendence
I mentioned marriage as an example of the antiliberal implications of the new science of complex order developed by writers on architecture such as Christopher Alexander and Nikos Salingaros.
There are of course many other examples, because the new science goes to basics. It helps make sense of living systems, explains how their specific qualities … More ...
Figuring out our situation
I’ve been reading Nikos Salingaros’ Twelve Lectures on Architecture: Algorithmic Sustainable Design. It’s a somewhat expanded set of notes for a series of lectures he gave a couple of years ago on architecture and urbanism. As such, it gives a clear if rather spare presentation of ideas he’s presented in his other books. … More ...
A Self-Contained World
[The following review appeared in the January 2011 issue of Chronicles.]
The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism, by Pascal Bruckner, translated by Steven Rendall. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 256 pp., $26.95
Pascal Bruckner is a French version of the Cold War liberal, updated for the age of jihad. … More ...