Roughly twenty years ago, a man in Asheville, North Carolina left his home in the wee hours of the morning, walked a couple of blocks to a convenience store, burglarized the store, and returned home with his loot. Unfortunately for our thief, snow had blanketed the city earlier that night. After responding to the burglary...
A friend who was just noodling around the AccuWeather site found a blog post called “Why Have Midwestern Cities Banned a Beloved Winter Pastime?” The piece, which seems like it might just sit in a slush pile on AccuWeather‘s news desk and await recycling every snow season, discusses a few horrible...
I would guess that the neighbor kids living across the street from me are a microcosm of America’s youth population. The oldest hates the distance learning that has been inflicted upon him in recent months. His younger sister, however, loves the secluded learning environment, and would be happy if she never had to go back...
Richard Holbrooke was the most shameless self-promoter in Washington D.C., a town that specialized in self-promotion, as George Packer writes in Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century. He was a social climber par excellence, a sycophant who embarrassed Barack Obama with his flattery to such an extent that he was banned from the...
I was recently gifted The South Was Right, by James Ronald and Walter Donald Kennedy, an updated version of a work originally produced in 1994. Seeking an antidote to the PC historiography in which our universities are now awash, I happily plunged into this printed gift. The present “leftist ideologues,” more than their predecessors, hate...
Seven years before he began writing his post-war masterpiece, 1984, George Orwell published Coming Up for Air, a novel in a different key that presaged the themes of his later book. Forty-five-year-old George Bowling is a character about as different from Winston Smith as can be imagined. Whereas Smith is sour, wan, and forlorn, Bowling is cheerful, hearty,...
If there were ever a time to “question authority,” as the old counterculture slogan of the 1960s urged, the authoritarian age of COVID-19 is that time. Two thousand twenty will go down in American history as the year that public health “experts” got everything wrong. It’s not just that their judgment...
Identity politics is now the term du jour and its meaning is clear enough on a superficial level—choosing people according to their physical characteristics and sexual preferences. The left wants more people of color, women, and gays in influential positions, while the right insists that these traits are secondary to competence in a given job....
The medical concept of triage became widely employed during World War I. In the industrialized warfare of the Western Front, casualties soon overwhelmed available medical care. New weapons like machine guns, high explosive artillery, and poison gas produced thousands of casualties quickly. There were only so many doctors and beds to go around, so a quick decision...
At the beginning of the year, a couple of my coworkers challenged me to join the yearly book challenge on Goodreads. While I am still wrapping up a few of my selections, I’m on track to finish my goal, and it’s rewarding to see the finish line in sight. Having done this challenge, I took...
My mom loved listening to Broadway musicals and particularly favored South Pacific. By the time I left for college, she had played that record so often I had memorized most of the songs and can still belt them out. I also saw the movie with her—I’m generally not a fan of musicals on film, and this...
Who could have predicted how dreadful a year 2020 would be? By this New Year’s Eve, 19 million to 20 million Americans will have contracted a deadly virus in a pandemic that exploded out of China to carry off 333,000 Americans, one of every 1,000 of us. As 2021 begins, Americans will be dying at...
Propagating gender reassignment among children should be a criminal offence, Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, the chairman of External Church Relations Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, recently declared on “Russia 24” TV network. His comment was made in response to Joe Biden’s recent statement of support for the supposed right of children to choose their gender. “The...
Combine Moses and a Harvard discourse on cancel culture and one encounters a perfect storm for prophetic words. That’s exactly what happened on Feb. 16, 1999, when Charlton Heston, movie star and president of the National Rifle Association, addressed a standing-room-only crowd at Harvard Law School. The film actor who played Moses and Ben Hur...
Denouncing the $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill as a parsimonious “disgrace” and hinting at an Alamo-style finish on Jan. 6, when Congress votes to declare Joe Biden the next president, Donald Trump is not going to go quietly. The anti-Trumpers and “Never Trumpers” celebrating at Christmas 2020, in this “dark winter” of Joe Biden’s depiction,...
There is a lot of discussion of late regarding various methods for protesting against government-mandated COVID-19 lockdowns or the results of the 2020 presidential election. Everything from singing in grocery stores to concentrated letter-writing campaigns has been suggested here at Intellectual Takeout. Such brazen displays are allowed in the U.S. because it still has some...
I was sitting in my local coffee shop when “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” began playing over the café’s speaker. Perhaps because this Christmas is so fraught with fear and uncertainty, this song caught my attention. I pushed aside my other thoughts and gave my full attention to the music, hunting down the lyrics...
This country is not governed by a “Republican Party” and a “Democratic Party.” It is governed by an establishment “uniparty” that betrays our citizens at every turn. Exhibit A: The joint annual ritual of fiscal vulgarity known as the omnibus spending bill. While Americans are distracted with the holidays, Beltway crapweasels stuff their legislative...
I know the propaganda game as well as anyone who lived and worked through the tail-end of the Cold War. I worked for the amply-funded propaganda arms of the two most propaganda-minded governments in the world, first as a broadcaster and newsroom subeditor with the BBC World Service in Bush House, London (1980-1986), and more...
If America were a company and not a country, we would have long ago dissolved the corporation, split the blanket, and gone our separate ways. What still holds this disputatious and divided people together? Consider. In announcing the $900 billion stimulus bill to deal with the pandemic, Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not mention...
I was stricken with COVID last month. You probably expect me to now explain how awful it was, how I laid around in bed, suffering in agony, and was nearly carted off to the hospital. But that would be a lie. The real story? I had some congestion, did lots of sneezing, and was quite...
According to my online dictionary, an oath is “a solemn promise, often invoking a divine witness, regarding one’s future action or behavior.” Oaths play a big role in our society. The Boy Scouts, known today as Scouts BSA since admitting girls to the organization, begin their weekly meetings by raising their right hand in the...
On Dec. 15 the Hungarian Parliament passed a constitutional amendment banning adoption of children by same-sex couples. The government-sponsored Ninth Amendment declares, succinctly and clearly, that a child’s parents are “the mother, a woman, and the father, a man.” It defines family as “based on marriage and the parent-child relation” and forbids homosexual propaganda directed at minors. The gender of a...
Two hundred and forty-seven years ago this month, a group of American opponents of the Crown’s tax policy donned disguises and set about methodically destroying a shipment of tea imported into Boston by the East India Company. The vandals trespassed on privately owned ships in Boston Harbor and threw the tea into the ocean. These...
First, they came for the Confederates. And that purge is far from over. Jefferson Davis Highway in Arlington, named for the president of the Confederacy, has been re-christened Richmond Highway. An Arlington group is calling for the removal of Robert E. Lee’s name from Lee Highway to be replaced by “Mildred & Richard Loving Avenue.”...
You may recall the saga of the South Carolina mom who granted her kids—nine, 10, and 11—permission to walk the mile home from school together, without her. School officials refused to release them to do this, on the grounds that a nearby intersection (with walk/don’t walk signals) is too dangerous. This particular mom’s kids happen...
A career as a writer offers many thrills as one piece after another gets picked up and published. Today, however, it also offers many nervous chills, as the specter of cancel culture could broadside a writer at any moment. I experienced one of the former thrills of writing when a piece of mine was published...
Perhaps I’m going crazy, but I thought I just heard NBC News and other respected information sources report that the recent burning of two Black Lives Matter (BLM) signs is being investigated as “potential hate crimes” by the Washington, D.C. police. Apparently these alleged hate crimes occurred as BLM and its sister organization (or rather,...
Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody, by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay (Pitchstone Publishing; 352 pp., $27.95). To understand wokeness, I often ask students to explain why they add the word “social” to “justice.” They have yet to provide a satisfactory answer. My subsequent requests for clarification...
My article “The New Resistance Is Rising” appeared on Intellectual Takeout on Dec. 1, 2020. Since then, we’ve seen even more evidence of fraud in November’s presidential contest, the Supreme Court and other lower courts have refused to look at the evidence of this fraud, and the left will likely take control of our federal government. Should Joe...
Much has been made this year of expressing gratitude to frontline and essential workers. Whether in healthcare, grocery stores, or other industries, these individuals put their lives on the line to serve others, forming a strong link in the web of interdependence we all share. Yet expressing such gratitude often requires us to notice events...
10,000 Not Out: The History of The Spectator 1828-2020, by David Butterfield (Unicorn; 224 pp., $30.00). Few journals have cut such a dash through history and culture as The Spectator, and none have lasted as long. David Butterfield has immersed himself to excellent effect in the British magazine’s billion-word digitized archives, paying tribute to a unique institution as...
This year has brought us a brutal lesson in the truth of the phrase “Ideas Have Consequences,” popularized by political philosopher Richard Weaver in 1948. Weaver argued that the rise of relativism was damaging Western civilization, eroding our abilities to use reason and logic for problem solving. Such loss of reason and logic have been...
Here is a textbook illustration of how the corporate media’s sins of omission can be far more damning than the corrupted industry’s sins of commission. Over the weekend, thousands of patriotic citizens descended on Washington, D.C., to protest election fraud and defend President Donald Trump. Left-wing “black bloc” mobs threw water bottles,...
Two thousand twenty will surely qualify as an “annus horribilis” in the history of the Republic. By New Year’s, one in every 1,000 Americans, 330,000, will be dead from the worst pandemic in 100 years. The U.S. economy will have sustained a blow to rival the worst year of the Great Depression. And by the...
I caught a glimpse of a friend’s Christmas decorations the other day while looking at social media. Positioned over the fireplace was the phrase, “The Weary World Rejoices.” That reference to a weary world, taken from the famous Christmas carol, “Oh Holy Night,” seems a fitting description of this year. Our world and those who...
If you thought you were sick of Zoom calls due to eye strain and the constant struggle to avoid talking over your coworkers, friends, or family members, you’ve escaped relatively unscathed. For many people, the frequent exposure to their own face while talking has driven them to some drastic measures. Plastic surgeons around the world...
The man whose books redefined the spy novel genre, David John Moore Cornwell, died of pneumonia on December 12 at the age of 89. Author of such intricately woven yarns as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley’s People, Cornwell was better known by his nom de plume John le Carré, and often dealt with the timeless issues of...
A new study by researchers at the University of Cambridge finds that the government-imposed lockdowns in response to the coronavirus pandemic cause significant harm to children’s mental health. The study, published this week in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, was the first of its kind to analyze data on younger children’s mental health before and during the...
One of my favorite field trips as a child was my annual summer visit to a one-room schoolhouse where I spent the day dressed in an old-fashioned dress and bonnet, scratching away on a slate and learning lessons out of old McGuffey Readers. At the time, my delight in the McGuffey Readers stemmed from the...
When the Electoral College meets Monday, it will almost surely certify former Vice President Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States. And he will take the oath of office Jan. 20. There is, nationally, a growing if grudging realization of that reality. Yet millions of Americans will refuse to accept the legitimacy...
Over the weekend Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, took to Twitter to criticize Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker for not taking more assertive government action to slow the spread of the coronavirus. “Massachusetts has more new COVID cases per capita than Georgia, Florida, or Texas,” observed Jha, who also...
Madness abounds. At an Illinois shopping mall on December 6, a boy asked a masked Santa Claus for a Nerf gun for Christmas. That Jolly Old Elf sternly said no, no guns of any kind, and suggested other gifts like Legos, leaving the poor kid in tears. His mother admirably refrained from punching Santa in the nose....
Parents and children across America breathed a sigh of relief when it was announced that “A Charlie Brown Christmas” would air on public television after all. This classic favorite seemed ready to disappear like everything else in 2020 when Apple TV obtained the rights and planned to air the program on its streaming service, instead of...
Readers: Please read this newspaper for 20 minutes every night until you have finished the entire issue. You may read longer, of course, but 20 minutes is the minimum. Use a timer. Record the date and number of articles you read each day, and the reporter. Please also indicate the topic of the article and...
Across America and Europe, many government officials are resuming lockdowns and tightening restrictions in the face of rising COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. The collateral damage of lockdowns, which has been well documented, includes widespread poverty, depression, bankruptcy, and unemployment. Meanwhile, the benefits of lockdowns remain murky. Several studies show there is little correlation between government restrictions and lower...
On the evening of Dec. 6, I watched the debate between Sen. Kelly Loeffler and the Reverend Raphael Warnock, who are running against each other for a U.S. Senate seat from Georgia with the runoff election scheduled for Jan. 5. As a non-leftist I am anxious to see the Georgia Senate seats now up for...
Attempts to erase or denigrate our country’s past are now routine. Men and women once regarded as heroes and great Americans are regularly attacked as racists, sexists, and capitalists, their statues of remembrance removed in the popular sport of statue-toppling. Sadly, such contempt for our past and for America’s ideals was likely...
One of the first lessons in an economics class is every action has a cost. That is in stark contrast to lessons in the political arena where politicians virtually ignore cost and talk about benefits and free stuff. If we look only at the benefits of an action, policy or program, then we will do...
One of the more interesting picks on Joe Biden’s team of health officials is California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Becerra has little to no professional experience with health care or infectious diseases. A lawyer long-entrenched in politics and public administration, his background suggests the role of compliance officer enforcing...