Am. History & Culture
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Sustainability: A Dem or GOP Value?
Deneen has put up an interesting post in which he points out that Liberals are more conservative when it comes to the environment than people who call themselves conservatives. He talks, I think, accurately about the fundamental incoherence in both the liberal and conservative positions, and the post is worth reading here. What interested me
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The Logos
We do not prove the existence of the poem. It is something seen and known in lesser poems.It is the huge, high harmony that soundsA little and a little, suddenlyBy means of a separate sense. It is and itIs not and, therefore, is. In the instant of speech,The breadth of an accelerando moves,Captives the being,
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My Two Cents on the Rick Warren Brouhaha
I understand why gays are upset about Obama's picking Warren to give one of the inaugural invocations, but I deeply believe that so long as "progressives" make culturally divisive values issues their rallying cry, it plays into the hands of the bad guys–at least until we resolve the constitutional crisis we're currently in the middle
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Metaxis
Metaxis is the Greek word used by Plato to describe the condition of in-betweenness that is a structural characteristic of the human condition–we humans are suspended on a web of polarities–the one and the many, eternity and time, freedom and fate, instinct and intellect, risk and safety, love and hate, to name but a few.
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Scientistic Humanism vs. Personalist Humanism
Scientism is a world view that promotes natural science as the only legitimate authority over all other interpretations of life. If it can't be explained in naturalistic terms that make sense within the materialist frame within which science operates, there is no plausible or legitimate explanation. Personalism (see also here) affirms the absolute value, dignity
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Liberal Social Order
(Revised 11/21) One of the basic differences between Social Conservatives and Social Liberals lies in the former's belief that chaos will ensue once traditional values and mores are completely jettisoned. As conservatives often say, Liberalism, for all its contempt for traditional mores, still lives off of the tradition's capital. And conservataives warn that once it
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The Flame of Living Tradition
Deneen reports on The Future of Conservatism conference at Yale where he was a presenter. He was particularly impressed with Anthony Esolen, whose presentation he briefly summarizes as follows: I can hardly summarize what he said, and am told that a recording will be available on the I.S.I. website before too long, but a basic
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Looking Ahead
We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards intothe future. The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving toward the grand fallacy. Mud sometimes gives the illusion of depth. –Marshall McLuhan For a McLuhanish essay I wrote some time ago, see here. The point is that we all
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Contractarians and Beehives
By way of Ross Douthat I have come across this very interesting 2007 post in Edge by psychologist Jonathan Haidt in which he argues that there are five fundamental moral stances in any society. I remember being quasi aware of it at the time it came out, but for some reason didn't grok it. There
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Republican Intellectuals
Look- the intellectual wing of the Republican party is dead. What is left are brain-dead acolytes spreading meaningless and simplistic anecdotes, trite stories, and distilled nonsense passed on that has a more fitting home in AM radio. The McCain campaign, once again, is just a symptom of the real problem- an intellectually incurious and lazy