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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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? […]
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 […]
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 […]
“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
Walter Williams: “We must own up to the fact that laws and regulations alone cannot produce a civilized society.”
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 […]
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 […]
February 22, 2018 – 1:03 pm
Last night CNN put on a televised “Town Hall” meeting on guns. I didn’t watch it, but from what I’ve heard my impression was that it was neither civil nor productive. (Astonishing, I know.) Charles Cooke comments on it, here. He calls it a “disaster for our discourse”. All comity and presumption of goodwill is […]
February 19, 2018 – 8:20 pm
For those who would ban all guns in private hands — and I know many of you personally — some Q & A: What are arms for? They are power multipliers. Who has arms has power over those who do not. What does it mean to be sovereign? What is it that distinguishes the sovereign […]
February 14, 2018 – 1:06 pm
By now you may have heard of a movie called Black Panther. It’s a Marvel Comics offering about a fictional, technologically advanced African Utopia called Wakanda. I haven’t seen the movie (I don’t think it’s even out yet), but I can certainly understand all the buzz, and why America’s black community would be happy to […]
February 11, 2018 – 7:40 pm
I think perhaps I’m turning the corner, now: no more fever, at least, though I’m still shockingly depleted. I say “shockingly”, but I suppose I should face facts: I’ll be sixty-two in April, and although I’ve always had the constitution of a lion, and have almost always managed to fight off whatever virus or bug […]
February 8, 2018 – 7:14 pm
Back in late November of 2016, the New York Times lamented, in its smugly named “Interpreter” column, that democracy was suddenly in danger around the world. (What might have happened around then that would have put them is such a frame of mind? I feel as if I’m forgetting something…) They called upon two boyish […]
February 6, 2018 – 1:15 pm
Yesterday’s post was a look at the tension and strife afflicting present-day America. In a comment, reader ‘Magus’ said: Obligatory libertarian quote: if the Constitution/US political framework set up by founders was unable to prevent the current state of affairs it was either complicit in it or failed to stop it. Either way, it was […]
January 24, 2018 – 11:45 am
I thank Bill Keezer for sending me an excellent essay, by law professor Amy Wax, on the collapse of civil discourse in academia. Professor Wax has had a better opportunity than most of us to observe this collapse first-hand, thanks to the cataract of abuse she endured for having commented publicly on another socially destructive […]
January 17, 2018 – 2:40 pm
Thirty-three years ago, Harvard severed all connections to single-sex clubs such as fraternities and sororities; since then these organizations have been entirely independent of the university. Now, in a repressive blow against freedom of association, Harvard has decided that merely distancing itself wasn’t enough: it will henceforward seek out and punish students who are members […]
January 17, 2018 – 2:06 pm
A while back I asked: is digital civilization sustainable? I wondered whether we had, in the long run, any good reason to expect cybersecurity to stay out in front of those who work around the clock to breach it. Despite ever-increasing (and increasingly burdensome) layers of security, we seemed to be, at best, neck-and neck […]
January 16, 2018 – 6:32 pm
Over at the Maverick Philosopher Bill Vallicella has published a post commenting on the failure of “Laïcité” — the doctrine of separation of church and state, intended to pre-empt religious political factionalism — in Europe. Bill advances the argument that, because modern Leftists are such unreflective secularists, they’ve lost their understanding of the “deep-rootedness” of […]
January 12, 2018 – 9:49 pm
Steven Pinker, who by some miracle still finds himself employed despite holding some deeply heretical notions (of which those he expresses are surely just the tip of the iceberg), is under fire today for some remarks he made at a panel at Harvard. The snippet that’s been making the rounds is this: The other way […]
January 11, 2018 – 10:30 pm
Well, the cat’s out of the bag (to the extent that it has been in the bag at all, lately): As we learn from undercover videos of its engineers (who mostly appear, judging by appearances and accents, to be recent arrivals to these welcoming shores), Twitter is indeed using shadow-bans to mute the voices of […]
January 4, 2018 – 9:11 pm
I see in the news that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is looking to change the DOJ’s lax policy regarding enforcement of marijuana laws. I think he’s right to do so. To put my own cards on the table: I’d like to see pot legalized. I think it’s a silly thing to criminalize, and its illegality […]
December 29, 2017 – 10:50 pm
Mass protests are underway in Iran against the totalitarian Islamic regime that has been in power since 1979. Something very significant happened yesterday: as reported by the AP, Tehran has announced that it will no longer enforce the dress code for women that has been in place since the revolution. This is a moment of […]
December 27, 2017 – 11:15 am
With a hat-tip to Bill Vallicella, we have for you an essay in which Rod Dreher, citing Theodore Dalrymple, examines the expanding sinkhole at the foundation of Western civilization: the family. The causes are many — among them are secularism (which, I believe, belongs right at the top of the list), multiculturalist decohesion, the substitution […]
December 26, 2017 – 6:31 pm
Today the fashion magazine Vogue tweeted this photograph. The caption read: “Is your hair holiday party ready?” I found it more than a little disturbing (and no, it wasn’t because of the missing hyphen in the compound adjective “holiday party”, as bad as that is). To me the photograph leapt off the screen as […]
December 18, 2017 – 10:58 pm
A reader (who is also an old friend) emailed me today, in response to yesterday’s post. That post contained this passage: In either of these cases ”” the origin of the stupefying complexity of living systems as either a self-organizing process across “deep time’, or as an act of God ”” if we turn and […]
December 17, 2017 – 8:55 pm
A few days ago I posted a brief item about the idea of “society” as something more than an aggregate of individuals. It began: How can anything benefit “society”? There is nothing we can call “society” that actually experiences anything at all — and what (and to whom) is the value of a benefit unexperienced? […]
December 12, 2017 – 2:59 pm
How can anything benefit “society”? There is nothing we can call “society” that actually experiences anything at all — and what (and to whom) is the value of a benefit unexperienced? If “society” benefits, it is only experienced by individual persons, each of whom experiences any social benefit or blessing as an individual. There is […]
December 10, 2017 – 4:40 pm
Ladies, are you worried that by some unfortunate turn of fate, you might someday find yourself in a relationship with a man? Just keep this checklist handy, and you’ll make sure you and your cats will never have that to worry about.
December 8, 2017 – 11:55 pm
I have nothing prepared for publication tonight — I was too busy all day, and I went to the VDare Christmas party this evening — but I’d hate for you to go away empty-handed, so I’ll offer you this excerpt from Richard Weaver’s essay Up From Liberalism: The attempt to contemplate history in all its […]
December 6, 2017 – 11:26 am
From the Telegraph: Don’t call us snowflakes – it damages our mental health, say young people Sorry, kids. It’s just that “fragile, helpless, trembling little mice” seems such a mouthful by comparison. We’ll try to come up with something else. Maybe “towering, invincible colossi”, with a little wink.
December 5, 2017 – 6:15 pm
This just in, from the Daily Mail: Demand for anal bleaching soars by 23% as women follow in the footsteps of celebrities including Sophie Kasaei, Charlotte Crosby and Kourtney Kardashian I notice Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and Queen Elizabeth didn’t make the cut there, for some reason. I guess times have changed. And after all, […]
December 3, 2017 – 3:40 pm
Over at Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella comments on the Kate Steinle verdict, in a post rightly titled A Struggle for the Soul of America. After quoting a passage from this essay by the indispensable Heather Mac Donald (an essay you must be sure to go and read in full), Bill adds: There you have it. […]
November 30, 2017 – 10:41 pm
The Kate Steinle verdict is in: the accused was found guilty only of a weapons charge, and was completely exonerated in causing her death — despite having undisputedly fired the shot that killed her. Frankly, I am not surprised, given the venue. But this will not sit well.
November 29, 2017 – 6:07 pm
Well, the sexual-harassment scalps keep piling up. Today it’s Matt Lauer (fine with me; I never could stand the guy), Garrison Keillor, and, if I recall correctly, some executive at NPR (who can keep track anymore?). The wholesale termination of all these male media bigwigs will likely have a consequence that, so far, I haven’t […]
November 22, 2017 – 2:47 pm
Richard Fernandez: Some social commentators have noted a mood of disillusionment. “Millennials report depression in higher numbers than any previous generation”, up to one in five. People appear to be tuning out of politicized “comedy”, sports and entertainment, exhausted by the public frenzy. It’s a direct consequence of the fall of the Narrative. The irony […]
November 18, 2017 – 9:38 pm
There’s a been a fuss about President Trump’s plan to remove the Obama-era ban on elephant trophies. Bien-pensant liberals greeted the news with uncomplicated moral revulsion, along the following lines: 1) Elephants are marvelous, beautiful, intelligent animals. 2) Hunting marvelous, beautiful, intelligent animals is always morally wrong. Therefore: 3) Supporting a policy that endorses, or […]
November 8, 2017 – 11:49 am
Worried that our culture is in decline? Relax. In fact, the more you can relax, the less this will hurt.
November 5, 2017 – 10:32 pm
The key weakness of liberalism — which, to be fair, has at times done much to improve society — is that it must assume as “given” the existence, and the continuing existence, of the society it hopes to improve. But liberalism, by its very nature — its pacifism, its sentimentalism, its opposition to hierarchy, its […]
October 27, 2017 – 3:17 pm
A few days ago I mentioned a manifesto called the Paris Declaration — signed by, among others, Roger Scruton — and gave it two-and-a-half cheers. I did allow that I had a “quibble or two”, but in general I thought — and I still do think — that it was an important step in the […]
October 24, 2017 – 3:47 pm
From Campus Reform: Prof: Algebra, geometry perpetuate white privilege The story is about one Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor of mathematics at the University of Illinois. We read: “On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of […]
October 24, 2017 – 12:02 pm
Here is David Bowie, in a 1999 interview, predicting in considerable detail the transformative, revolutionary effect of the Internet on media and culture.
October 17, 2017 – 11:51 pm
Ah, Diversity. How its worship enriches us! It doesn’t, of course. But it does, at least, make for some last-minute entertainment, here on the deck of the Titanic. There are some areas of human activity that lie forever beyond the reach of heartfelt wishes and fond imaginings: places where reality is still there even after […]
October 15, 2017 – 10:23 pm
From Albion’s Seed, page 896: There is a cultural equivalent of the iron law of oligarchy: small groups dominate every cultural system. They tend to do so by controlling institutions and processes, so that they tend to become the “governors” of a culture in both a political and a mechanical sense. The “iron law of […]