“I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.” Yeah, right. There was a time when this saying, often attributed to the French philosophe Voltaire, was taken as a kind of American credo. Free and open debate, most of us thought, was essential [...]
Not long ago, The University Bookman (a fine online journal well worth the attention of imaginative conservatives) posted a review of an important book, The Culture of Immodesty in American Life and Politics, edited by Michael Federici, Richard Gamble, and Mark Mitchell. This volume collects essays addressing the pretensions of our public life, populated as [...]
A Church then I take to be a voluntary Society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord, in order to the publick worshipping of God, in such a manner as they judge acceptable to him, and effectual to the Salvation of their Souls. —John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration Religious Toleration-Edwin Howland [...]
New York City is a strange place in many, many ways. This is to be expected. After all, squeezing that many people into that small a space defies both logic and common sense. Then there is the economic absurdity of the place. The average annual income in New York City is $50,000, while the average [...]
The latest upsurge in Islamic extremism, carried out by “ISIS” or “the Islamic State,” should be deeply troubling for all Americans. I must admit that at the sight of innocents, including innocent Americans and Christians attempting to mind their own business, being beheaded, my first reaction was anger and a desire for revenge, followed by [...]
I have been told that in the world of professional wrestling, popular villains are known as “cool heels.” Professional wrestling hardly is on the cutting edge of moral theory or even trends in popular culture. But its inclusion of “cool” bad guys into its violent morality plays is an indication, I think, of how far [...]
It seems only yesterday that the Supreme Court, in the Hobby Lobby case, held that the federal government cannot force Christian owners of closely held corporations to pay for employee health insurance coverage for abortion inducing drugs. After that case, some commentators predicted greater government respect for the rights of religious believers to refuse their [...]
President Obama has been taking a good deal of flak, lately, for all the time he is spending on the golf course. He famously “took a break” from his latest vacation to address the horrors of the beheading of an American journalist by an Islamic extremist group, and to say a few words about the [...]
As long as there have been “libertarians,” there has been hero worship of John Stuart Mill. This Nineteenth Century utilitarian author, most famously of On Liberty, has been looked to as a kind of fount of holy writ for individualism. And Mill was an individualist. Unfortunately, he was not a supporter of liberty in any [...]
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 [...]