I don’t link much to National Review anymore, but the resurrection of the popular image of Ulysses S. Grant has been a cause of mine since I wrote a bad term paper about it in college. A pertinent fact: Grant was one of the more popular presidents of his era, winning two lopsided elections and… Read More Rethinking President Grant
Jonah Goldberg, explaining why he’s not voting Trump. This is what I’ve been saying to myself for the last month or so. I don’t owe the GOP my vote. They don’t own my franchise, I do. I not only have the right, I have the duty as a citizen not to give my legal assent to… Read More “I Don’t Work for the G-d-Damn GOP”
As my wife belongs to SAG, we get SAG screeners. One of them is the new Bryan Cranston movie Trumbo, a biopic of one of the Hollywood Ten. I’ve decided that I’m not watching it. Yes, that’s right, I’m judging a movie before I’ve seen it, phillistine that I am. Here is why: How many Blacklist pietas Does… Read More Trumbo Should Not Be Seen By Anyone
Within Kevin Williamson’s takedown of the mindlessness of bureacracy (And please, read the whole thing), lies this interesting nugget: Over the years, economic success and administrative demands eventually transform bands of roving bandits into bands of stationary bandits. One popular theory of the state — one that is pretty well-supported by the historical evidence in… Read More If Government is Banditry, Anarchy is Impossible
Kevin Williamson opines on how monsters make the ladies swoon. The phenomenon of young women falling in love with death-row inmates, particularly with serial killers, is not new: Women flocked to Ted Bundy’s trial — his trial for raping, torturing, and murdering young women as a prelude to acts of necrophilia — and he received… Read More Charles Manson, Star Wars, and the Joy of Hate
A provacative reversal of conventional wisdom, discussed by John O’Sullivan in a long-but-worthwhile article at National Review. Kimball raises the question of whether cultural, psychological, artistic, and social movements were, not the consequences of the Great War, but instead among its causes. Without going overboard on this — since the upsetting of Europe’s balance of… Read More Did World War 1 Cause the Collapse of European Values? Or was it the Other Way Around?
Roofies are rape culture, obviously. Nail polish that detects roofies? Also Rape Culture. Because women shouldn’t have to “prevent rape”. Men should just not rape. Because rape denies women agency over their own bodies, anything which gives women a means of protecting or ensuring that agency is also part of rape culture. Like, duh. Also… Read More Everything is Rape Culture
National Review’s Ramesh Ponnoru and Rich Lowry have attempted the difficult task of finding middle ground between the fighting camps of the Great Republican Civil War. They call it “Against Despair,” and it has been making the rounds in the conservative blogosphere. Instapundit linked approvingly (albeit with a cross-link in praise of Ted Cruz) Erick… Read More Against Complacency
Though I nodded to its inevitablity on election night, I am bone-weary of the circular firing squad. It was the social conservatives’ fault; it was Romney’s fault; it was the Tea Party’s fault, et cetera ad nauseam. Now Jim Geraghty of NRO blames Libertarian voters, even though, as Geraghty clearly indicates, all of Gary Johnson’s… Read More The GOP’s Credibility Gap
At NRO’s Corner: The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of… Read More Charles Cooke Quotes an Old Philosopher on the Wisdom of Gun Control
Content Blues 