The media and the hand-wringing politicians who are dancing on the grave of the career of Columbia, South Carolina, School Resource Officer Ben Fields are pulling a fast one. They claim that, because “black lives matter,” the young woman who refused to relinquish her smartphone and leave math class at Spring Valley High School should...
Month: December 2015
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Disconnected: Our Virtual Unreality
It’s summer in your neighborhood. School is out in suburban America. Trees line ponds stocked with fish available for “catch and release,” the “natural” areas abounding with turtles, ducks, geese, cotton-tailed rabbits, and squirrels. Shady parks are equipped with playgrounds with swings and what used to be called monkey bars. Look around you. It doesn’t...
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Release the Klan(s)!
Move over, Ashley Madison—there’s a new scandal in town. At least, that’s what the media is desperate to have you believe. In late October, the “hacktivist” group Anonymous, usually referred to oxymoronically as a “collective” of anarchists, announced that they had obtained the membership rolls of several Ku Klux Klan organizations. They planned to release...
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Remembering Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) was the most substantial intellectual to reach high political office in the United States since Woodrow Wilson. Thus his life, writings, policy deliberations, and political efforts, and the effects of these, deserve the most careful and respectful attention. If the apocalyptic era of European history began with the outbreak of World...
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Electing Your Own Boss
Until the late 1950’s and early 60’s, the deal for government employees was that they were paid less than similar private-sector workers but got excellent benefits, especially strong pensions and almost absolute job security. And although some government workers belonged to associations, they did not have collective-bargaining rights. The deal was a fairly good one. ...
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Pax in Our Times
In 1970’s London, things were a bit more rudimentary than they are today: You considered yourself lucky to get through 24 hours without losing your electricity thanks to the latest “industrial action” (strike, to you and me), the trains were invariably late, and my memory is that most people didn’t exactly overdo it when it...
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Out of Syria
The New York Times and Pat Buchanan warn that the United States is being drawn into the Syrian civil war, now a regional conflict. President Obama is allowing himself to be pressed by Hillary Clinton, Gen. David Petraeus, John McCain, and other hawks who wish the United States to impose a no-fly zone and a...
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House Speaker Ryan
It is fortunate for the Republicans that Democrats and liberals generally have a completely false impression of the meaning of the last two Congresses, though most of the GOP has an equally wrong one also. The left’s belief in the eventual arrival of a liberal utopia makes it easy prey to the erroneous conviction that,...
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Truth in Poetry
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79) is considered to be among the most important American poets of the 20th century. She was a U.S. Poet Laureate and won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and the Neustadt International Prize. Her collection Questions of Travel (1965) may be the best known. Perhaps her literary reputation outpaces her true...
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