Several people have sent me links to an article by Rod Dreher on the narrowing of acceptable public opinion, and the suffocating and isolating effect it has on speech and social interaction. When we have an opinion that might run afoul of Cathedral orthodoxy (and there are fewer and fewer opinions one might have nowadays […]
The secularist writer and podcaster Sam Harris has got into a public scuffle with Ezra Klein, “editor-at-large” of the young-adult news website Vox, over Harris’s recent interview with Charles Murray, and the more general question of the role of genetics in the distribution of traits in distinct human populations. The absolutist “blank-slate” view of human […]
Making a bit of a splash at the moment is a new book by the Harvard geneticist David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past. (Any book that says anything truthful about heredity and human groups is going to attract attention these days, […]
According to this report, the Obama administration suspended the mechanism whereby employers are notified that the Social Security numbers used by their employees don’t match the employees’ names. This sensible cross-checking had been used to catch both fraud and clerical errors, and had prevented millions of citizens from losing Social Security benefits they were entitled […]
It appears that my blog-posts are now appearing again in Google searches. I don’t know if this was due to a re-indexing after the blog’s title change (perhaps the blog’s title carries more weight in Google’s world than for other search providers), or whether it might even have been thanks to some behind-the-scenes assistance from […]
With a hat-tip to our reader and commenter “Whitewall”, here’s a depressing item: German Defense Minister Seeks ”˜Reconciliation’ with Taliban It is difficult to read this without thinking that such a story simply cannot be true: that it is completely beyond all credibility that anyone not a child or an imbecile could possibly imagine that […]
In the news today: Al Sharpton’s half-brother charged in murder after marching against guns I have to admire Rev. Glasgow for going the “extra mile” to demonstrate how dangerous guns are, but I do think he and his pal might have asked Breunia Jennings for her permission before drafting her to participate in such a […]
Here’s a response, by Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer [cue ad-hominem attack in comment thread in 3…2…1…], to Hillary Clinton’s insulting remarks the other day about winning the “dynamic” states, and losing the backward ones. I will confess that I hesitated before mentioning That Woman’s name in print. As Richard Wagner is said to have […]
March 26, 2018 – 11:38 am
With a hat-tip to our e-pal Bill K., here’s Richard Fernandez on our psychotic media environment: With misinformation as with miseducation the public sees, but not in due proportion. Its calculations are put all out of reckoning. The image of world is presented like a reflection in a fun house mirror, with certain aspects greatly […]
March 25, 2018 – 11:26 pm
A great way to prevent mass shootings is by avoiding civil war.
I’ve been unable to turn on the news over the past 24 hours without immediately hearing about yesterday’s protests against “gun violence”. The news agencies have clearly learned a trick or two from their show-biz colleagues who call themselves “illusionists”: if these protests were about “violence”, the marchers would surely have something to say about […]
March 24, 2018 – 11:13 pm
As occasional leavening for the steady diet of politics and reaction I’ve been posting up here for years now, I think I’ll begin revisiting my other life: decades spent recording and mixing music. (Because so many of the recordings I’ve worked on are now on YouTube, it’s easy posting.) I’d say about three-quarters of the […]
“Continental breakfast” is to breakfast what Continental philosophy is to philosophy: something to chew on, but devoid of nourishment.
March 23, 2018 – 12:48 pm
In a comment to my previous post, reader Asher says that Leftism, rather than rejecting the supernatural, locates it in Man himself. I think this is almost right. But it is subject to an important objection: if Darwinian Man is nothing more than a part and product of Nature, then locating the “supernatural” in Man […]
Our friend Bill Vallicella has posted an interesting essay on the Left’s attempt to maintain a doctrine of transcendent egalitarianism while scraping away the transcendent. He describes the problem as follows (after noting that our academic institutions have become “Leftist seminaries”): What explains the fervor and fanaticism with which the Left’s equality dogma is upheld? […]
We’ve been hearing a lot about the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data-mining story, in which personal information about Facebook users was scooped up by a firm working for the Trump campaign. The media have been all over it. It’s been terrible PR for Facebook, and the company’s stock has dropped sharply. The media response was not, however, […]
March 20, 2018 – 12:00 pm
An addendum to yesterday’s “reactionary roundup“: In the Radio Derb podcast linked to in the post, Mr. Derbyshire reported on the detention and deportation of several identitarian dissidents who had come to England to express their views at Hyde Park’s famous Speakers Corner. One was a young Austrian by the name of Martin Sellner. Mr. […]
March 19, 2018 – 10:19 pm
For tonight, something to listen to and some things to read. To listen to, we have John Derbyshire’s latest Radio Derb. This week’s 43-minute installment is dedicated to the cultural and demographic death of his ancestral homeland, the British Isles. It is a melancholy survey of the ruin of a great nation, but some things […]
Nobody has brought more clarity to reporting on the tempest of scandals and investigations flooding the political landscape than National Review‘s Andrew McCarthy. As the federal prosecutor who handled the case against the “Blind Sheik” Omar Adbel Rahman for the 1993 Word Trade center bombing, he brings expertise and authority to a topic that would […]
Writing at the Federalist, Molly Hemingway gives us the latest on the DOJ’s skulduggery in the Trump investigation: a personal relationship between FBI agent Peter Strzok and the FISA-court judge Rudy Contreras, who mysteriously recused himself was recused after taking Mike Flynn’s guilty plea. Ms. Hemingway’s story, which is based on newly obtained text messages […]
In the comment-thread to our previous post, we see in microcosm the tremendous fissure in American culture and politics. It goes far deeper than mere disagreements about policy; it has reached the point in which the two sides have entirely different conceptions of moral, political, cultural, social, historical, and even human reality — views that […]
March 15, 2018 – 10:10 pm
We’ve been treated in recent days to the spectacle of schoolchildren marching in the streets to demand legislative restrictions on gun acquisition and ownership. This sort of thing is nothing new; I remember my own adolescence, in the late 60’s and early 70’s, and the student protests of that era. When you’re that age, it’s […]
Well, I’m back up, it seems. The technical problems on the backend appear to have been due to some gummed-up WordPress plugins and an old version of PHP. I’ll confess that I had begun to suspect that something darker was happening. My recent exclusion from Google search results (while Bing and DuckDuckGo results were unaffected) […]
With a hat-tip to our friend Bill K., here’s a good, short video (just over four minutes) on the realities of evil, guns, progressive hoplophobia, and protecting our schools.
A busy couple of days. Back shortly. I’ve noticed also that there have been a lot of backend errors recently that have been affecting connectivity here. I’m investigating and hope to have a resolution shortly. Thanks for your patience. Update, 3/12: The backend problem persists. (Just posting this update took me half an hour.) Support […]
“Will you tell me how to prevent riches from becoming the effects of temperance and industry? Will you tell me how to prevent riches from producing luxury? Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing effeminacy intoxication extravagance Vice and folly?” – John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, December 21st 1819
Big news tonight about a meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong Un. Most commentators, including many I respect, are suggesting that Mr. Trump is being played, just as previous presidents were. I’m not so sure. Here’s why. What’s different this time around is that Trump is using a different lever, and he isn’t using […]
Yesterday the 9th Circuit Court Of Appeals allowed a children’s climate-advocacy group to proceed with a lawsuit against the Trump administration for not preventing global warming. The suit argues, with a straight face, that inaction by the Federal government to produce what the plaintiffs believe to be necessary carbon-reduction policy violates the children’s Constitutional rights […]
Walter Williams: “We must own up to the fact that laws and regulations alone cannot produce a civilized society.”
If you didn’t listen to the John Batchelor show last night, you missed an informative (and worrisome) conversation between the host and Professor Stephen F. Cohen about the new U.S. – Russian arms race. The issue is this: since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has abandoned the commitment to parity that prevented […]
Here’s an interesting item: politics and geology. It’s a reminder also of how much warmer the Earth once was, long before your SUV ruined everything.
If you’re familiar with Patrick Buchanan, you won’t be surprised to know that his latest column is a ringing defense of tariffs. An excerpt: “Trade wars are not won, only lost,’ warns Sen. Jeff Flake. But this is ahistorical nonsense. The U.S. relied on tariffs to convert from an agricultural economy in 1800 to the […]
With a hat-tip to Bill Vallicella, here’s Rod Dreher commenting on this year’s Best Picture, The Shape of Water. (If you aren’t familiar with the story — due, perhaps, to your having been in a coma for several months — it is about a woman who enters into a romantic and sexual relationship with an […]
Around the Outer Cape in the off-season I’m reminded of how many people here are capable of subduing, commanding, and profitably plying the proximate physical world, and how stark the contrast is with the cosmopolitan, soft-handed symbol-manipulators who spend their time and money here in the summer. A great many of the people who live […]
In a recent post I declined to comment on the proposed imposition of new tariffs, pleading ignorance of the subject. The uncommonly astute blogger calling himself “ZMan”, however, has a definite opinion. An excerpt: The fact is, the current trade regime ushered in after the Cold War, has proven to be the boondoggle critics like […]
Planned Parenthood tweeted this the other day: Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have […]
While responding to a comment to a recent post just now, I wanted to add a link to an earlier item of mine: Can Progressivism Really Be A Kind Of Religion? I thought the quickest way to find it might be to look it up in Google. I typed in the title, and … nothing. […]
A foreground item in the news in these last days has been President Trump’s announcement of tariffs on various goods. As with everything else he says or does, (or, for that matter, anything that any prominent person says or does these days), there has been pugnacious disagreement. I’m not going to comment on this one. […]
It’s a dreary day here, and I find myself at a loss for anything interesting to say. Instead, then, I give you Russian politician Valentina Petrenko. And her hair.
I was back at my old alma mater, Power Station Studios, earlier today. It’s on West 53rd Street in Manhattan. Nearby, some expensive apartment buildings have gone up. If you’re lucky enough to afford one of these tony residences, here’s your front door: Is it me, or did we miss a turn somewhere?