In Yosemite Valley one can walk for miles through a meadow surrounded by granite monoliths, cliffs, and forested mountain peaks. The view changes every time one turns, but remains stunning. A relatively short distance away is a hike to Yosemite Falls—one of the world’s tallest—for views of water and mist tumbling over sheer walls of [...]
Marvel Comics has announced that its superhero Thor—you know, the Norse god?—is getting a sex change. Well, not exactly. First off, it is no longer Marvel Comics, it is Disney’s Marvel Comics. Which obviously explains a lot, here. The House of Mouse decided years ago that it would be happy to be the House of [...]
In a recent post at The Daily Beast, Joel Kotkin, who teaches and writes mostly about urban affairs, demonstrates his uncanny ability to spot wide socio-economic trends and their implications. Not himself a conservative, Mr. Kotkin nonetheless lays out in this post, a teaser for a forthcoming book, The New Class Conflict, the deeply conservative fact [...]
So now Sarah Palin has called for President Barack Obama’s impeachment. The response from the New York Times and other representatives of the “mainstream” media no doubt will be a combination of derision and studied indifference. And this should not surprise anyone. Unless an almost-literal smoking gun magically appears showing beyond a shadow of a [...]
Recent stories concerning the sorry state of American education have focused on problems with the new “Common Core” public school curriculum and retention of clearly incompetent teachers. As a parent who long ago rejected our public school system, these seem to me to be mere symptoms of a much deeper and more critical (one might [...]
Many religious folk have been rejoicing at the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the case concerning the Obama Administration’s attempt to force Hobby Lobby and other religious businesses to pay for contraceptive and abortifacient drugs for their employees under the Health and Human Services Mandate. The Court held that the [...]
Most of us have been told from a young age that religious beliefs cause strife. The early modern “wars of religion” are portrayed as merely the most overt form of what happens when religion is allowed too much influence in public life. Of course, Protestant and Catholic forces fought on both sides of these conflicts. [...]
“Fractured” fairy tales have a long history in American popular culture. Jay Ward was noted for a segment with precisely that title in his Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon shows. Even in the small doses provided by Ward, fairy stories stripped of their original drama with winks, nods, popular references and, of course, colloquial language, came [...]
Any doubts any of us might have had that Obamacare is, by design, a transitional program leading to socialized medicine should, by now, be part of the past. A recent article sums up the facts, noting that analysts on both the left and the right agree that the vast majority of us who currently get our [...]
What Steve Jobs “sold” with his Apple devices was the myth of control, of importance, and of connection through technology. In truth, the vast bulk of what these personal devices offer constitutes a massive waste of time—and, worse, a diversion from genuine interaction with actual people, or nature, or our own minds. Redesigning the World [...]
I admit to being rather pleased when I first read that a number of “actors” in pornographic films had been told by their banks that their business was no longer welcome. It seems the banks had determined that such persons posed a “reputation risk.” Too distracted by other things to pay much attention, I assumed [...]
What are we to make of this powerful, contradictory figure and his influence on our society? Origins A decade after his death from cancer, Steve Jobs remains an icon of contemporary business and popular culture. Co-founder of Apple, he amassed a fortune of mammoth proportions and built the most highly valued corporation in the world. [...]
My goal in this essay is less to impart a specific teaching than to tell a story. This story, I first should point out, is not a myth made up for didactic purposes, as so many such stories tend to be. It is rather a true story, one rooted in things we know about history, [...]
Conservatives to a significant degree are defined by their respect for historical origins. In the American context this has meant recognizing the importance of a tradition with its roots in England, but also further back, and further East. To put it in terms reminiscent of Russell Kirk, the religion of Jerusalem, the philosophy of Athens, [...]