thoughts in and out of season
I’ve left something out of the first two pieces. When people speak of love, loyalty or hatred for America they don’t just mean America as land and people, together with whatever human connections happen to join them. They mean America as a substantive moral unity, as a sort of personality. Otherwise they wouldn’t talk so … More ...
I’ve said what I like about America. But what do I dislike?
Here again it’s hard to avoid cliche and attitudinizing. People have been hating America for a long time. It hasn’t done them much good or shown them to advantage.
On the whole, my dislikes are the flip side of my likes.
I don’t … More ...
What do I like and dislike about America?
It’s hard to comment. It’s like asking what I think about life, or the world. What do I like and dislike about 300,000,000 people from every conceivable background spread out over the better part of a continent?
And compared to what? Most of what’s good and bad … More ...
Takimag has published the following piece I wrote on social conservatism. Unfortunately, they no longer allow comments, which was always half the fun of publishing there.
Is Social Conservatism Necessary?
by James Kalb
January 15, 2009
Is Social Conservatism Necessary?
The voices of conventional wisdom are telling us once again that the Right should … More ...
The merest straw in the wind, but interesting nonetheless: Religious people have superior visual perception. It seems that Dutch Calvinist university students recognize embedded visual patterns faster than their atheist classmates.
The study reminds me of one Christopher Alexander reports in his Nature of Order that showed that children were generally very good at … More ...
A friend is guest-editing a special issue of some publication that will deal with problems of gifted and talented education. For some reason he asked me to contribute an article, and here’s an initial sketch that I plan to expand a great deal. Any comments at this point would be nonetheless welcome.
… More ...Gifted and Talented
“Nostalgia” is frequently associated today with “racism”, “sexism”, and “homophobia”. Among our betters, it has become a sort of general put-down for popular attachments. As in the case of “tolerance,” “openness,” and “acceptance of change,” the point of the expression at bottom is “do what you’re told and like it.”
Such expressions … More ...
The modern technological outlook can’t deal with issues of identity, because it abolishes essences—understandings of what things “really are”—in favor of measurable properties that fit the thing for particular chosen ends. That’s why it’s thought ignorant, irrational and abusive to treat someone differently because he’s a man or a gypsy, but not because he … More ...
In my last entry I moaned and groaned a bit about how the kind of reason that enables us to live reasonably has become an archaic concept, since the principles of scientism, commercialism and bureaucracy can’t make sense of it, and in comments to an earlier entry I touched on one aspect of its … More ...
Mark Richardson makes an interesting point in his discussion of the British writer Rebecca West: she may have been a feminist socialist, but she had a much more civilized mind than you’re likely to find today. In particular, she was able to enter into, and take seriously on their own terms, the several types … More ...