State of the Culture
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Discovered by one of his fellow atheists: Can there be any residual doubt, after this latest imbecility, that Richard Dawkins is in the service of the global cabal of faiths henceforth to be known as Big Religa? In other atheistical news: Some atheists are starting a "church", which strikes me as very odd and yet…
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I think that’s the question–not “did it do any damage?” Rod Dreher, in the New York Times, thinks it was a lot: Whatever the evangelical merits of Pope Francis’s game-changing interview, there can be no doubt that the pontiff has decisively undercut the efforts of American Catholic politicians and Catholic bishops on issues related to…
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My wife's typically brief and accurate take: "He's sort of loosey-goosey when he talks, isn't he?" Someone else, whom I'll refrain from identifying but who can speak up if he or she sees this and wishes to: "We've got Paul VI again." It was a brief conversation, but what I took the Paul VI comparison…
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I went off on another trail, as is my tendency, and haven't finished this book yet. But at this point, about halfway through, I think it may be the best book I've ever read on the contemporary social-political situation. Maybe that's not saying a lot, since I haven't read many such books. Suffice to say…
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To assert seriously the superior authority of transcendent truth or to reject "inclusiveness"–to say, for example, that homosexuality or the cultural effects of immigration are a problem–is to be excluded from respectable public life, viewed as potentially violent, treated as a threat to social order, and subjected to social, vocational, and occasionally (especially outside the…
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It's focused on her connection to two other people: the writer of the profile, and the little-known '60s pop musician Curt Boettcher, who holds a deep fascination for both of them: "She Told Herself She Couldn't Die Because She Had to Write His Story." It's extremely interesting, and a little surprising for the NYT in…
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The fatal flaw of liberalism was always its pretense or fantasy that the state could and would remain neutral on most questions of value, especially the big ones. This illusion was only possible because there was a broad consensus on most of the most serious matters in that realm. When, almost immediately after the establishment…
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This is not a review, because I'm only on page 68 of this book. But I can't resist quoting from it. So far it seems to be the most incisive and thorough critique of liberalism I've seen. It's plain that liberalism, the doctrine of maximum freedom for all, is in fact exhibiting a paradoxical drift…
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But nobody calls for a knowledge worker when the woods are on fire. –me, May 2010 I rather like that line.
Light On Dark Water 