Phillip Blond ( Red Tory: How Left and Right Have Broken Britain and How We Can Fix it ) offers a succinct summary of why liberal political order descends to tyranny. Liberalism is, on Blond’s definition, a political order erected on the assumption that human beings are fundamentally . . . . Continue Reading »
In an intriguing chapter on modern agriculture in Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (The Institution for Social and Policy St) , James C. Scott notes that the isolation of a few variables is “a key tenet of experimental science” and . . . . Continue Reading »
Philip Blond calls the family “a deeply radical and indeed feminist institution” because it “binds men to women and offers a cultural account of how they should behave towards one another.” On the other hand, progressive demolition of the family has left unmarried women . . . . Continue Reading »
Jameson Graber responds to my post yesterday on the individualism of the Tea Party movement: “This quote in your post caught my attention: ‘Today, populist rhetoric “fires up emotions by appealing to individual opinion, individual autonomy, and individual choice, all in the service . . . . Continue Reading »
Conservatives are today almost invariably defenders of capitalism. It was not always so. As Phillip Blond argues in Red Tory: How Left and Right Have Broken Britain and How We Can Fix it , “In the eighteenth century it was the Anglican Tory gentry who often defended the prosperity . . . . Continue Reading »
Depoortere ( Badiou and Theology (Philosophy and Theology) ) provides a neat summary of Georg Cantor’s theological-mathematical treatment of infinity. Cantor was led into these theological waters by the same paradoxical sets that Badiou uses to disprove the existence of God. The . . . . Continue Reading »
Frederiek Depoortere’s Badiou and Theology (Philosophy and Theology) is a challenging, fascinating introduction to Alain Badiou aimed (as the title and series subtly suggest) at theologians. Badiou is best known to theologians as the atheist-Maoist-Marxist author of Saint Paul: The . . . . Continue Reading »
Nicholas Berdyaev argued that Russian Nihilism was traceable to Orthodoxy: “if could appear only in a soul which was cast in an Orthodox mold. It was Orthodox asceticism turned inside out, and asceticism without Grace. At the base of Russian Nihilism, when grasped in its purity . . . . Continue Reading »
The always insightful Anthony Esolen has a superb piece on the First Things page today defending the controversial theses that Shakespeare was “a profoundly Christian playwright” and that he was a rigorous advocate of male chastity, for Shakespeare “as near to an absolute value as . . . . Continue Reading »
Arians use the words of Scripture, Athanasius acknowledges, but they use them only as a cloak and disguise to deceive and seduce. They are like the devil their father, who used Scriptural language to tempt Eve and attempted to tempt Jesus by quoting Scripture. What’s the difference . . . . Continue Reading »
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