I remember once hearing someone who dealt with such things point out that there was one particular trait characterizing all cult religions: the lack of a sense of humor, not only with regard to others, but in relation to themselves as well. Cult religions, after all, are usually obsessed with one doctrine, to which all...
In 2019, my then-fiancée and I met with our priest during the premarital counselling process. One of his questions was whether we wanted children. We said we did. That was good, he replied. If we didn’t, he would refuse to marry us. Although he would make exceptions for marriages beset by genetic, medical, or mental...
Memo in light of recent events, for the immediate attention of all political and media leaders aligned with the Woke Revolution, which is to say, just about all of them: Mass shootings like those that just took place in Atlanta and Boulder are a tragedy, of course. But they are also one of the best...
A recent survey found that more than one-third of Americans overestimate by as much as a factor of ten the probability a person with COVID-19 will require hospitalization. Researchers involved in the Franklin Templeton/Gallup study asked Americans in December what “percentage of people who have been infected by the coronavirus needed to be hospitalized.” The correct answer...
The 1960s, according to Carl Oglesby, a former president of Students for a Democratic Society, “will never level out.” “It’s a corkscrew, it’s a tailspin, it’s a joyride on a roller coaster, it’s a never-ending mystery,” he continues. “Who won? Who lost? What were the terms of victory and defeat? We’ll always be discussing that.” I...
A video of a white teacher from Loudon County, Virginia protesting the required Critical Race Theory (CRT) training for teachers is a highlight of Andrea Widburg’s article, “Maybe the pendulum is starting to swing on cancel culture.” Take one minute to watch this female fireball, and you’ll hear what so many of us are thinking but...
Our mainstream media largely ignored it, the world media did not. Ascending the stairs of Air Force One on Friday, to fly to Georgia, President Joe Biden slipped and stumbled. Getting up, he slipped again and then fell. The scene was jolting and disquieting. Adversaries abroad will use it as a metaphor for the decline...
A few billion years from now, the Sun will continue in its life cycle, become an expanding red giant, and most likely envelop the Earth. This spectacular solar smack-down should be no problem for humanity, however. We’ll have already met our demise, most likely via omnicide. Sound grim? Check out Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, a...
America’s Revolutionary Mind, by C. Bradley Thompson (Encounter Books; 584 pp., $32.99). Thompson’s examination of colonial America’s natural rights political culture and the effects of the Declaration’s oft-quoted passage about unalienable rights is not likely to please members of the traditional right, and as such I consider it required reading. Thompson presents copious evidence that those...
In recent days, various reporters have been turned away from the now infamous “George Floyd Square” as they tried to film or report from the scene. The area where Floyd died in May of 2020, setting off a chain reaction of riots across the country, has now become an autonomous, no-go zone, dangerous for any...
There is an advantage to being 70 years old, with no Twitter account, no interest in Facebook, no regular job, and no financial dependents. I can speak my mind. I refrain from pushing my politics on others, but if asked I will tell you I supported the Trump-Pence ticket and explain why. If asked my...
Asked bluntly by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos if he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is “a killer,” Joe Biden answered, “Uh, I do.” Biden added that he once told Putin to his face that he had “no soul.” Biden also indicated that new sanctions would be imposed on Russia for the poisoning of dissident Alexei Navalny...
Get a job. Get married. Have kids. Those seven words are part of the core message in Charles Murray’s The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead, a book I recommend to young people. Most of us have read these recommendations somewhere as a formula for a successful life, and conservatives in particular advocate this approach as the...
President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats have successfully passed the American Rescue Plan, with its $1,400 stimulus checks and its $1.9 trillion price tag. In total the federal government has now spent enough on COVID stimulus and relief to fund key moments in American history, such as world wars and moon landings, many times over....
“I really wish this country would come into the middle,” Trump lawyer Michael van der Veen remarked on Fox News last month. “It’s so polarized on the Left and on the Right.” Van der Veen is not alone in this desire, expressed shortly after Trump’s second impeachment acquittal. Many commentators have noted that the country is “polarized”...
All of the presidents of the 21st century—Bush, Obama, Biden, and yes, even Donald Trump—seem a cut below the gravitas and statesmanship of the founding fathers. The first three were—and are—globalists, and as anyone with eyes can see, Joe Biden and his crew are busy taking a wrecking ball to our liberties. Regarding Donald Trump,...
Friday, as the jury was being empaneled for the trial of fired police officer Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis City Council voted 13-0 to approve a record $27 million civil settlement with the family of George Floyd over his death in police custody. The jury will not likely miss this message sent by the city fathers: I.e.,...
A Somalian feminist and well-known critic of Islamic patriarchy, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, expressed the following critique of Black Lives Matter in an interview with the Hoover Institution last summer: What we are seeing now is this mishmash of people who call themselves Black Lives Matter have found the hook. They found a way of going about the...
The other day I ran across a passage from That Hideous Strength which seems oddly applicable to our time. A dystopian novel written by C. S. Lewis at the close of World War II, That Hideous Strength finds one of its main characters, Mark Studdock, working for N.I.C.E., an organization which pulls the strings in a controlling, totalitarian society....
The Biden administration is studying slavery reparations for African Americans. One of the prominent justifications for reparations is the racial income gap, and some proponents of reparations argue that wealth redistribution would put blacks on equal footing with white Americans. This analysis is misguided. A major reason for the racial income gap is the individual achievement...
Many thought that the government-imposed lockdowns of 2020 might result in a temporary reprieve of the United States’ falling birth rates. Unfortunately, it appears that this will not be the silver lining of COVID-19 after all. Economists Melissa Kearney and Philip Levine believe that there will be 300,000 “missing births” due to the pandemic, based on...
The “woke” crazies never quit. In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen Mr. Potato Head attacked for his gender-bias and the Muppets “put into context” by Disney. Meanwhile, as Intellectual Takeout’s Annie Holmquist reports, the cancel culture mob is busy banning or assaulting other films and books. I believe there is a way to halt this...
Today, the four premier leaders of The Quad—the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan—conduct their first summit, by teleconference. The Quad, or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, is an informal strategy forum of the major Indo-Pacific democracies that some wish to see evolve into an Asian NATO to contain China, as NATO contained the Soviet Union for 40...
One of the most prominent children’s book authors of the 20th century, Dr. Seuss, suffered a double blow to his legacy this month. His estate said they would no longer publish six of his children’s books that contained depictions of Africans and Asians that are “hurtful and wrong.” The Biden administration followed by unceremoniously dumping...
Before William Shakespeare there was Geoffrey Chaucer. The Bard borrowed at least one of his plots from his predecessor (“The Two Noble Kinsmen,” was based on the “Knight’s Tale”). Both English greats were, it could be said, refashioning Homer’s Shield of Achilles as they painted elaborate portraits of their entire societies, from the lowliest corners to...
Biden administration health official Rochelle Walensky announced Monday that vaccinated Americans can visit with others who are vaccinated in small groups at home. But when Walensky was asked about visiting grandchildren, she said no, unless the kids are local. Even vaccinated people must avoid traveling. “Every time there’s a surge in travel, we have a...
In the February 2021 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, Professor Mark Brennan declares, “My students look at me in amazement when I tell them I read 8 to 10 hours per day. I look at them in amazement when they tell me they play video games 16 hours straight.” Brennan then went on...
The general feminization of Western society has had many negative effects, not least of which is the poisoning of intellectual discourse. Research shows that men tend to act as warriors, who emphasize winning and proving points; women tend to be empathetic, and place far greater value on people’s feelings. But feelings have no business in academia. Intellectuals should...
During a Democratic debate in 2020, the candidates were asked if their health care plans would cover “undocumented immigrants.” Each raised his or her hand, including front-runner Joe Biden. From that stage, the message went forth: If the Democrats win this election, then it is amnesty for all and open borders in America. The message was...
Oprah Winfrey’s much anticipated interview with Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, has now hit the airwaves, causing a stir on both sides of the pond. On the surface, the big takeaways from the interview revolve around politically correct buzzwords. “Racism” appears with sirens and flashing red lights upon the revelation that...
“That attack, that siege” of the Capitol, FBI Director Chris Wray told Congress, “was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it was behavior we at the FBI view as domestic terrorism.” “Domestic terrorism,” said Wray, echoing his boss. For what had been President-elect Joe Biden’s reaction to the Capitol riot? “Don’t dare...
In case you have been lost in the woods and have managed not to hear the news, the United States is facing a blood-chillingly scary white supremacist terrorist threat. The “stunning violence” of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol is perhaps only a prelude of what’s to come, for all experts agree that the biggest...
We’re only a few months beyond the turn of the calendar and already I have a candidate for the word of the year: Censorship. Examples are proliferating at such a fast rate that it seems like a game of whac-a-mole just to keep up with all of them. A few of the most recent include:...
With reparations, there is the issue of who pays. Do African countries owe reparations to Black Americans? After all, Harvard’s director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Henry Louis Gates, wrote that 90 percent of those enslaved and shipped to the New World were sold by Africans to European slavers. All...
Someone’s head must have rolled at the Aspen Institute when Anand Giridharadas’ book came out. Giridharadas didn’t miss a rung as he climbed the American establishment’s social ladder: born in Shaker Heights, schooled at Sidwell Friends, the University of Michigan, and Harvard, employed at McKinsey, the International Herald Tribune, and The New York Times, and mic’d up...
CNN’s recent criticism of the reopening of Texas and Mississippi has once again proven its journalists merely engage in partisan coverage. This time it is accompanied by the added demerit of not understanding the nuances of federalism in America’s governance. With Govs. Greg Abbott and Tate Reeves both deciding it is high time to re-open...
In a recent article for Intellectual Takeout, I looked at possible explanations for an apparent decline in IQ averages in Europe and America. Since then, I have begun to wonder whether this drop in intelligence might play a part in some of the goofy programs coming out of Washington D.C. of late, and in our inability to exchange...
Thursday, in its first military action, the Biden Pentagon sent two U.S. F-15Es to strike targets of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia just inside the eastern border of Syria. The U.S. strikes were in retaliation for a missile attack on a U.S. base in Irbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, which killed a contractor and...
The other day I was sent an Instagram video of a little boy having story time on his mother’s lap. The little boy was precious, the time spent on his mother’s lap special, but the choice of reading material was… “woke.” The selected story was The GayBCs by M. L. Web. “A is for Ally,” repeated the little boy,...
Recent broadsides from the French government, and most conspicuously from French President Emmanuel Macron, against the American woke Left and U.S. cancel culture drew a mixed reaction from me. Frankly, I find no reason as a European historian to believe that French journalists and academics are any less infected than our own with political correctness....
It didn’t take long. Barely five weeks after assuming control, the new foreign policy team in Washington confirmed its interventionist credentials by bombing “Iran-backed militias” in Syria. The “defensive precision strike” on Feb. 26, according to the Pentagon statement, was supposed to send “an unambiguous message” that, acting to protect American and Coalition personnel, “we have acted in...
The New York Times’ “1619 Project” is a series of articles published in 2019 to mark the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans to arrive in America. In an introduction to the series, New York Times Magazine Editor-in-Chief Jake Silverstein claims that slavery “is the country’s very origin.” He writes: Out of slavery—and...
Someone’s head must have rolled at the Aspen Institute when Anand Giridharadas’ book came out. Giridharadas didn’t miss a rung as he climbed the American establishment’s social ladder: born in Shaker Heights, schooled at Sidwell Friends, the University of Michigan, and Harvard, employed at McKinsey, the International Herald Tribune, and The New York Times, and...
Nearly every Wednesday night for the past seven years I’ve watched Married at First Sight, a reality show which finds expertly matched couples meeting each other at the altar. My wife finds it inexpressibly tasteless, and two of my daughters who watched it with me, each once, expressed irritation that I made them sit through...
America’s Revolutionary Mind, by C. Bradley Thompson (Encounter Books; 584 pp., $32.99). Thompson’s examination of colonial America’s natural rights political culture and the effects of the Declaration’s oft-quoted passage about unalienable rights is not likely to please members of the traditional right, and as such I consider it required reading. Thompson presents copious evidence that...
Amid an eloquent diatribe against the “woke” left and its friends in the Deep State, Fox News host Tucker Carlson attributed to American Deplorables a sentiment that may more accurately reflect his own feelings: “All they want to do is go back to how things were in 2005.” I heard myself responding out loud...
Mere pandemics cannot stop the Richard Wagner bibliography from expanding, indeed from metastasizing. Yet, even as the catalogue of new books on the famed, 19th-century German composer expands, “woke” culture threatens to drive him, and the Western civilization he represents, into a state of cancellation. Vast quantities of ink have been lavished upon every bizarre...
The only thing those on the left hate more than a conservative white male is a conservative black male. It simply infuriates leftists when a black man rejects their socialist dogma and espouses such conservative ideals as individual initiative, freedom from government, self-reliance, responsibility for decision making, and competing in the marketplace. How dare he! A...
The Biden regime’s frantic moves in recent weeks to escalate tensions with Russia—at a time of China’s continued economic and military rise—are irrational, inexplicable by any standard method of foreign policy analysis, and perilous to this country’s security interests. Mr. Biden’s decision less than two weeks after his inauguration to move B-1 bombers to Norway “to...
Seizing control of the means of information is the sine qua non of a successful coup. Radio, television, and newspapers must be grabbed first and foremost. That is what the Greek colonels did in the last successful European coup, back on April 21, 1967. Some years later, a colonel tried but failed to overthrow the elected post-Franco Spanish...