The historian Michael Bellesiles tried to usher in the new millennium by claiming that guns were scarce in colonial America and even beyond. The problem was, it was quite easy to show that his research was flawed and his conclusions nonsensical. It wasn’t the first time that a historian with an agenda was found out, [...]
There is a cartoon that has, as they say, “gone viral” on the internet in the last two weeks or so. It’s one of the oldest threads from the Schultz empire, and one never tires of its utterly predictable and utterly funny ending. Lucy the capitalist progressive always wins, and Charlie Brown never learns. Here [...]
Knute Rockne “College football would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity.” — H.L. Mencken, 1922 We will confound [...]
A review of Richard M. Gamble, In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth. New York: Continuum/Bloomsbury Academic, 2012. Mythology, n. The body of a primitive people’s beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents [...]
(This is for Brad Birzer, who threatened to be cranky.) Just after the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, the novelist John Dos Passos said, “All right we are two nations.” Dos Passos was still a socialist America hater at the time, and seemed to represent the future in a year that Calvin Coolidge, [...]
A couple of nerds, one of them a wannabe jock, have been making minor headlines in such classy publications as Slate, running the old “let’s ban college football” canard up the flagpole. Malcolm Gladwell and Buzz Bissinger, supposedly well-known writers (but, thankfully, ones I had never before heard of) “won” a debate against former NFL [...]
Mexico Way (by Chilton Williamson, Jr.; Chronicles Press, 2008) This is a way cool novel, as several of my grand daughters would say. Chilton Williamson, Jr. who grew up in the wilds of New York City and after many missed steps found himself to be a cowboy, is one of the best writers that too [...]
Winston has asked me to review books for TIC, and to ask you to help me with this project. I read hardcover books, softcover books, Kindle books, little kids’ books (one of my favorites is Reynard the Fox); almost anything that comes into my hands. We might have a small budget to get the right [...]
I just read the results of a poll taken by Rasmussen stating that 47% of Americans now think that abortion is morally wrong “most of the time.” This is the first time, Rasmussen says, that the question, framed exactly that way, has been answered at under 50%. In other words, it could be argued that [...]
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot’s activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but ‘pervades and regulates the whole.’ He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashion of opinion and [...]
This is adapted from my 1993 short book, John Witherspoon and the Presbyterian Constitution. It is intended to tell part of the story of the early American understanding of religious liberty, and to leave to the reader its bearing upon the current controversy, so utterly wrongly pictured by many as a “Catholic” issue or one [...]
Hypocrite, n. One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.–Ambrose Bierce I’ve wondered, from time to time, what parents may have been thinking to name a son “Rush.” A few of my New England ancestors adopted hortatory names–”Small-Hope Biggs,” “Safely-on-High Snatt,” or my favorite, as [...]
Willard Romney is a devoted member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, by his own admission and the testimony of those who know him. He went to Brigham Young University as a dutiful son should, and later to Harvard to get his secular credentials; he did his mission in France, a [...]
M. Stanton Evans once said, in defense of free markets, “It all depends on how prosperous you want to be.” Prosperity, most of us would agree, is generally a good thing. The Western World has been quite good at it, although prosperity has often required that we compromise on the important things that got us [...]