November 13, 2009 – 12:11 am
Recently Bill Vallicella excerpted, and I commented briefly upon, some passages from philosopher Michael Oakeshott’s essay On Being Conservative. Wishing to refresh my memory of a few points, I opened it up again today — and was impressed once more by what a fine piece of writing it is, and by how well it limns […]
October 31, 2009 – 9:15 pm
Not tonight, anyway. So make your way straight over to The Joy of Curmudgeonry, where our friend the estimable Deogolwulf has just published a formidable essay on the auto-genocide of the West. Here.
October 29, 2009 – 5:44 pm
Well, our theme for this week notwithstanding, this is certainly anything but “shameless filler”: Bill Vallicella, over at his website Maverick Philosopher, has presented some pithy excerpts from Michael Oakeshott’s essay On Being Conservative, in support of his thesis that conservatism is first a matter of temperament and inveterate disposition, and only thereafter a matter […]
October 21, 2009 – 1:02 pm
Over at CNN today we learn that the Coalition of Reason, an association of godless heathens, has purchased some advertising space in Gotham’s subway system. Their ads will point out the plain empirical fact that it is possible for people to be good without religion. What’s telling about this is not the story itself, but […]
October 8, 2009 – 11:15 pm
When we enumerate those few qualities that, despite Man’s infinite capacity for folly and cruelty, reveal nevertheless a transcendent spark that sets us apart from the beasts, chief among them, perhaps, is our astonishing ability at times to create, even as we groan upon the rack, works of art of timeless and ennobling beauty. We […]
October 5, 2009 – 12:46 pm
According to the New York Times, the city’s Education Department has now banned bake sales. Here. (Hat tip: The Stiletto.)
October 1, 2009 – 1:00 am
In the paper the other day there was an item about Pope Benedict’s recent remarks to the people of the Czech Republic. The Pope, speaking to one of the most secular societies on Earth, sought earnestly to persuade them of the dangers of a society without God. On a superficial level this is easy enough […]
September 28, 2009 – 9:07 pm
A reader emailed me a link today, and asked: “Ought the government prosecute?” The story in question is a distasteful one: apparently somebody set up a poll on Facebook that asked the question “Should Obama be killed?” According to the linked item, there were three options: “Yes“, “No“, and “Maybe, if he cuts my health […]
September 23, 2009 – 11:53 pm
I speak up for Western society often, and consider its defense important, but I have to wonder sometimes if it’s really worth it anymore. There may indeed be barbarians at the gate, but the accelerating putrescence of our popular culture reminds me daily that we have an ample store of them right here at home. […]
September 21, 2009 – 11:19 pm
Today marks the 143rd anniversary of the birth of H.G. Wells, and Google has marked the occasion with one of those curious UFO banners they’ve been featuring lately. Wells is best known today for his immortal contributions to science-fiction — such classics as The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and The Invisible Man […]
September 18, 2009 – 5:52 pm
Readers may have heard, by now, about former President Jimmy Carter’s wise and helpful comment that “an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he is African-American.” In today’s Best of the Web newsletter (second item), James Taranto has […]
September 9, 2009 – 11:54 pm
I imagine most of you watched tonight’s health-care speech. My first day back at work was a long one, and so I missed almost all of it; I’ll have to find a transcript. From the post-mortems I did see on the news channels it seems the central issues linger, including perhaps the most central of […]
August 13, 2009 – 12:02 am
Our friend H. Jeffery Hodges, who writes thoughtfully about the problem that Islam poses to the rest of the world, has been doing so again lately. In posts here, here, and here, he discusses the book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, by the Weekly Standard’s Christopher Caldwell.
August 11, 2009 – 3:36 pm
There’s a dark but timely discussion underway at Mangan’s, kindled by this Washington Post item. Here.
Forgive me for beating a dead horse, but British physician and writer
Dennis Mangan calls our attention to an article in Newsweek, by Sharon Begley, that takes aim at the burgeoning science of evolutionary psychology. Begley effectively pronounces the field dead, which will certainly be news to its practitioners. Anthropologist Dan Sperber writes that the evo-psych community knew this broadside was coming, and that its publication in […]
Today we direct you to an excellent post by Bill Vallicella about the putative “right” to health care. A little while back I mentioned that left-leaning governments tend always toward acting in loco parentis; Bill’s post offers the Democratic health-care initiative as an illustrative example. Bill makes the important point — seldom acknowledged — that […]
At CNN today is a pop-science puff piece that breezily summarizes some of the natural underpinnings of what we all know to be true: men and women are different. The article touches, blithely and matter-of-factly, on differences in body chemistry, brain anatomy, emotions, and cognition. You’ll certainly get no argument from me; I’ve always thought […]
I’ve linked to a few essays by Pat Buchanan recently, and have another for you today. There is much that I disagree with Mr. Buchanan about, both culturally and politically — his paleoconservative isolationism comes to mind, as well as his doctrinaire opposition to evolutionary theory, the scientific bedrock of modern biology (see, for example, […]
In 1972, when I was 16, I took a drive across America with my good friend Tom “Toby” Sherwood (peace be upon him). Toby was the older brother of Evelyn, a girl I had been orbiting, and although he was a few years older — at 21, he had just emerged from Harvard with a […]
There’s an item in the news today about “neurosecurity”: the need to protect “neural devices” — computerized electronic machinery designed to interact directly with the human brain — from unauthorized manipulation. The creation of technology to provide direct interfaces betweens computers and brains is a rapidly evolving field, but the effort so far has concentrated, […]
The history of the world is essentially a long, dolorous tale of ethnic and religious animosity and violence. Little has changed in the modern era; president Hu Jintao of China has just left the G-8 summit to address a rising tide of ethnic slaughter in Xinjiang. Now Pat Buchanan reminds us, in a cautionary essay, […]
I always enjoy David Brooks’s column in the Times. He has an impeccable conservative pedigree, but never seems to take sides on any issue out of sheer partisanship, and even when he has strong opinions (with which I do not necessarily agree), he is unfailingly civil, and never shrill. Best of all, he writes well. […]
Readers will have noticed that output has fallen off drastically here lately; the demands of the workplace have continued to press heavily upon me. There seems to be light at the end of the tunnel, however, and in fact I am actually spending this weekend doing things other than writing and debugging program code — […]
French president Nicolas Sarkozy announced yesterday that the burqa — the head-to-toe garment worn by some Muslim women — is “not welcome” in France, and the French National Assembly is now preparing an inquiry into whether the enshrouding of women to shield them from the view of men other than their owners is so fundamentally […]
In an important development that may have far-reaching consequences, recent reports appear to confirm the suspicion, long held by many, that most people are in fact massively ignorant about almost everything. See here, and here.
As has been the case for over thirteen centuries, East and West are still glowering darkly at one another across a deep cultural divide. One hopes always for harmony and rapprochement — themes that Mr. Obama will, I am sure, focus on in his upcoming speech from Cairo — and perhaps, in this small and […]
It appears that the California Supreme Court has decided to uphold the ban on same-sex marriages that the state’s voters passed in November. There would have been vociferous manifestations of outrage no matter how the decision might have gone — either from those who felt that an activist Court had overridden the expressed will of […]
From number 720, in the Krailsheimer edition: Ethics and language are particular, but also universal, branches of knowledge. In this illuminating insight the great Pascal anticipates moral philosophers and evolutionary biologists such as John Rawls and Marc Hauser by over 300 years. As homo sapiens we all share an innate moral faculty and finite ethical […]
It’s been a busy weekend — it often seems there is less free time on the weekends than during the week — so there has been little opportunity for brooding and writing. For tonight, then, here’s a cheery little item about Google and you.
From commenter JK comes a link to a story about a young girl with juvenile diabetes who died because her parents, besotted by delusional religious fantasies, saw fit only to pray for her, rather than seek simple and effective medical treatment. We read: Last Easter Sunday, 11-year-old Kara Neumann of Weston, Wisconsin, lay motionless on […]
At CNN this morning we find Oprah Winfrey interviewing a Dr. Daniel Pink, who, in his book A Whole New Mind, suggests that linear, rational, “left-brain” thinking is hopelessly passé, and that those who wish to prosper in the brave new world of the 21st century had better get their right brains off the couch. […]
There was a brief item in the Times today about a court ruling against one James Corbett, a California schoolteacher who, it was ruled, violated the Establishment Clause by dismissing creationism in class as “religious, superstitious nonsense”. This offended the sensibilities of a student of his, Chad Farnan, who sought legal remedy, and got it […]
According to today’s news, it appears Objectivism’s star is ascending lately, with sales of Ayn Rand’s books up sharply. Readers taking an interest in Randian thought should visit The Maverick Philosopher, where Dr. William Vallicella has for some time now been conducting a searching examination of Rand and her followers. Note also this post over […]
In today’s Times is an article about who should be directing the plays of August Wilson. Apparently Mr. Wilson, whose plays chronicled the lives of black people in America, felt that only black directors should be in charge of productions of his work. We read: In life, the playwright August Wilson had an all-but-official rule: […]
When a political movement seeks to control behavior, an important first step is customarily to stigmatize the practice in question as morally offensive. For example, during the First World War, when criticism of the Wilson administration’s policies was suppressed by harsh restrictions of the press, it was common to hear calls for severe punishment, all […]
I’ve written a few posts lately about Ray Kurzweil’s notion of an impending technological “Singularity“, a sort of “omega point” at which exponentially accelerating technological trends will converge, with world-changing effect. Now Dr. Kurzweil and several others have founded, at NASA’s Ames Research Center, an institution called the Singularity University (modeled on the International Space […]
With a hat tip to Norman Geras, here’s a fine essay by Joe Queenan on the “euphemism treadmill” that is now affecting what used to be called the “War On Terror”.
There appears to be a bit of friction between the US Army and some of its Sikh recruits about whether the soldiers should be allowed to maintain the turban, uncut hair and beard that are emblematic of their faith. This is likely to be cast as a rights issue, but it is of course nothing […]
The boffins at the University of California have just alerted us that use of Twitter may imperil our moral faculties. Apparently the problem is that no sooner has the popular messaging service delivered to us a 140-character synopsis of some calamity than another “tweet” comes along, driving the old one from our consciousness before we […]
There is a characteristically penetrating conversation underway over at The Maverick Philosopher on the subject of whether mere thoughts can be morally wrong (Bill Vallicella says yes.) I’m still mulling over the arguments made, and haven’t had time myself to read all of the latest contributions, so am reserving comment for now. Go and have […]
March 31, 2009 – 12:06 pm
Here’s more good sense about our nation’s demented and obsessive “War on Drugs”, this time from Jack Cafferty: Someone described insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. That’s a perfect description of the war on drugs. Exactly right. (That “someone”, by the way, was Albert Einstein.) […]
March 30, 2009 – 11:47 pm
It is a truism these days that any claim relating the statistically varying abilities and aptitudes of human beings to, say, skin color, or “gender”, is a shocking and benighted atavism, a pernicious throwback to the bad old days of racism and sexism. If such correlations emerge, as they occasionally do, from a “scientific” study […]
Diligently doing its part to undermine America’s intellectual respectability and competitiveness, the Texas Board of Education is taking up an amendment this week that seeks to smuggle religious myths, such as the transparent Creationist fraud known as “Intelligent Design”, into the science classroom in the name of “academic freedom”. Were this dispute taking place only […]
As President Obama sends a wave of federal agents to our border states in response to the violence now spilling over from Mexico, we find on CNN’s main page a sensible Op-Ed piece calling for an end to our bloody and puritanical “war on drugs”. We read: It is impossible to reconcile respect for individual […]
March 17, 2009 – 11:14 pm
I am more than a little concerned about our new president’s stewardship of the vital friendship between the U.S. and Britain. Mr. Obama gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown the cold shoulder during his recent visit, saying he was “too tired” for a state dinner, and later a Foggy Bottom staffer blithely dismissed the snub, saying […]
March 11, 2009 – 11:38 pm
In his latest post, Jeffery Hodges has brought to our attention, and commented upon, a very interesting article by Roger Scruton about some of the fundamental distinctions between Islam and the West. I do hope you will go and read it.
Minimum-wage laws are often thought of as a boon to the least fortunate, and a moral rebuke to Dickensian free-market sorts — but they do not always confer the blessings their sponsors desire. A recent government report about a sharp rise in minimum-wage mandates in Honduras shows us something about unintended consequences.
February 28, 2009 – 12:25 am
In today’s email, a friend has sent me some photographs of angry Muslims demonstrating on the street in what appears to be London. They are carrying signs, glowering menacingly, brandishing their fists, and shouting. The messages they carry are clear enough, if rather unimaginatively monotonous: SLAY THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM. BUTCHER THOSE WHO MOCK ISLAM. […]
February 23, 2009 – 12:47 pm
In an editorial piece at CNN’s website, Michael Eric Dyson praises Eric Holder’s recent speech on race relations as “courageous and honest”, and suggests that Holder’s “nation of cowards” remark, which a great many morally stunted people have found tendentious and gratuitously offensive, has been “taken out of context”.