Author: Jeff Minick (Jeff Minick)

After the Civil War, former North Carolina governor Zeb Vance became a U.S. senator. His Northern colleagues enjoyed his affable nature and sense of humor, and some of them invited him to Massachusetts during a break in government business. While there, Vance attended a party, and eventually required a visit to the outhouse, where his...

After the Civil War, former North Carolina governor Zeb Vance became a U.S. senator. His Northern colleagues enjoyed his affable nature and sense of humor, and some of them invited him to Massachusetts during a break in government business. While there, Vance attended a party, and eventually required a visit to the outhouse, where his...

From government employees to healthcare workers, from professional athletes to school teachers, large numbers of Americans find themselves either having to resign their positions for refusing the COVID-19 jab or being fired. It doesn’t matter whether they’ve already recovered from the virus or whether they have religious objections to the vaccine. The mandate issued by...

“Santa Claus is comin’ to town,” are the repetitive words to a classic Christmas song. But will those words ring true this holiday season?          Perhaps not, if the ongoing backup of ships and supplies at major American ports continues. The Spectator explores this problem in “The Supply Chain Problem Is Here to Stay.”...

The other day I was sitting in a coffee shop when a rap song began playing in the café. The F-word—you know, the one that rhymes with muck and yuck—featured prominently in the lyrics. I was happy there were no children present.  After leaving the café, I went to our library to return some books....

Certain politicians and special interest groups have brought out the pipes and drums to renew the Green New Deal. I recently heard our president on the radio shouting—and he was really shouting—about the perils we face if we don’t spend trillions of dollars fighting climate change. He told his audience that the scientists and our Department...

Recently I needed to visit the Urgent Care Center here in Front Royal, Virginia. I have gone there two or three times over the past four years, usually waiting around 15 minutes to see a doctor or a nurse. This time the woman at the front desk told me my wait would be between three...

We can trace our American penchant for victimhood back decades. Consider the 1957 musical “West Side Story,” which features two New York City gangs, the Sharks and the Jets, warring with each other. At one point, some of the Jets sing “Gee, Officer Krupke,” in which they mock the reasons given by the courts, psychologists,...

(Note that what follows is entirely satire, including the quotes from a CDC spokesman, which are invented.) Unnoticed by some in the present upheavals caused by the delta variant of COVID-19 was a quiet announcement from the Center for Disease Control linking the virus and human hair.            “Numerous tests have...

Sally* has worked as a nurse in an operating room for more than 30 years. She’s seen horrors most of us can only imagine, gunshot victims, patients maimed beyond belief, the dead from failed surgeries carted off to the morgue.            Right now, she’s witnessing the decline of American health care....

I’ve just learned I may be a terrorist.            On Aug. 13, the Secretary of Homeland Security issued a statement warning about an increase in domestic and foreign terrorism. At the end of the document’s summary were these words: “Such threats are also exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing global pandemic, including grievances...

A 60-something French Intellectual Takeout reader and I began an email correspondence a few years ago. We lost touch in recent months, but when I learned of the severe COVID-19 restrictions being enforced in France, I reestablished contact to get her impressions. “I belong to the vax and health pass resistant group,” Marie wrote, “and though not being...

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter poses this riddle: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” After some further conversation, the Hatter asks Alice:    ‘Have you guessed the riddle yet?’… ‘No, I give it up,’ Alice replied. ‘What’s the answer?’ ‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said the Hatter.   We’ve seen...

Many people seem to be wondering what will become of the human soul in another world. I am wondering what has become of the human mind in this world. G.K. Chesterton wrote those words almost a century ago in his essay, “The Rout of Reason.” I find myself wondering the same thing on this August...

When I went to pick up my laundry last week, one of the employees, who had just finished folding my clothes, began weeping. “This is the last load I’ll ever do here,” she said in a choked voice. “They’re letting us all go.” That one little stifled sob described more than just one woman bemoaning...

“F” is for failure. Last week, I happened upon an article reporting over 40 percent of Baltimore’s high school students had a 1.0 grade point average or less. In other words, 40 percent of these students were practically flunking their course load. That shocking figure led me to look at statistics from U.S. News and World Report, compiled before...

Yesterday I was tapping away on the laptop when through the window I saw a young man walking up the drive toward the house. He was shirtless, wearing jeans and brogans—do they still call work boots by this name?—and I correctly assumed he was one of the crew repaving the driveway of the house across...

Dear Members of Congress: Some of you who are doing your duty in representing your constituents need not pay attention to this letter. You know who you are. For the rest of you, I have a question: Where in the name of our country are you people? Since Jan. 20, we’ve had a crisis at...

I’m 70 years old, 5’7”, and a bit past my ideal measurement on the Body Mass Index. Let’s say I wake up tomorrow morning, look at myself in the mirror, and suddenly decide I’m capable of hitting three pointers in the National Basketball Association. I see myself soaring through the air like Michael Jordan, ball...

Many of my grandkids love knock-knock jokes, but the younger members of the gang don’t quite grasp the concept. They get the “Knock-Knock” part correct, but the rest of the joke falls pancake flat, as in: “Knock-knock.” “Who’s there?” “Sally.” “Sally who?” “Sally I don’t know who.” In their defense, let me add these kids...

Joe Biden calls himself a “devout Catholic.” Sorry, Joe, but your claim is bogus and your hypocrisy rank, as can be seen in the whole recent communion controversy. That Catholic bishops shouldn’t have to deny Joe Biden communion because of his support for abortion, which the church considers a grave sin, is a point correctly...

In 1986, Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” That was 35 years ago, and I’d like to suggest a nine-word update: “I’m woke, and I’m here to change the world.” The woke folks suck the fun out of everything,...

Joseph Bolanos’ reputation as a pillar of New York City’s Upper West Side community was shredded in February when FBI agents and heavily armed police raided his mother’s apartment where Bolanos was spending the night. They handcuffed him while other agents battered down the door to his home and kept him in the street in...

TANSTAAFL with its triple repetition of the letter “A” is an acronym popularized by science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein meaning, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” TANSTAFL with a double A is my play on Heinlein’s contrivance: “There ain’t no such thing as free love.” Free love may bring to mind that term...

Father. Now there’s a word weighted with meaning. For Americans indoctrinated in gender politics, father brings to mind the patriarchy, male domination, and oppression. For others, the word father summons nightmares from childhood, abuse, slaps and punches, drunken rages, constant criticism, and neglect. Or maybe they remember Dad as the man who would come home...

Every once in a while something pops up on YouTube that knocks me for a loop. I was messing around there recently when I found “Woody Allen Looks at 1967,” a variety show hosted by the comedian in which he featured guests like actress Liza Minnelli and singer Aretha Franklin. Nothing unusual there, but then...

Twelve-year-old North Carolinian Mike Wimmer recently graduated as valedictorian of his high school class while simultaneously earning an associate’s degree at his local community college. Cooped up like everyone else during the pandemic, young Wimmer decided to go to a full court academic press and add some classes to his schedule. “Well we’re sitting here doing nothing, right?...

Joy. Pure unadulterated joy. This is what I felt on the first of June when I stepped into my favorite coffee shop here in Front Royal, Virginia and found all of the employees except one without face coverings. Gone were the bandanas and surgical masks, and for the first time in a year I could...

Please hop into my time machine, and I’ll give you a short tour of Boonville, North Carolina in the summer of 1959, before bringing you back to the present day. Strolling around this small hamlet of 600, note the town’s most historic building, the old brick bank founded long ago by Mr. Shore. Take in...

In the movie Casablanca, Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) demands her brokenhearted former love, Rick (Humphrey Bogart), hand over some letters of transit that will allow her husband Victor to escape the Nazis. When he refuses, she pulls a gun and repeats her request, but Rick tells her, “Go ahead and shoot. You’ll be doing me a favor.”...

At my elbow is a letter from President Biden that came in the mail this past weekend. It’s torn in half, dotted with coffee grounds, and slightly soggy, because I just now retrieved it from my kitchen wastebasket. I rescued this letter from the banana peels, other junk mail, and a chicken carcass to read...

In the parish church I attend here in Front Royal, Virginia, out-of-town visitors are often surprised by the number of babies, children, and teens at any of the four Sunday services. Wiggling kids fill the pews, somewhere a baby is crying, and at the back of the church is a room reserved specifically for nursing...

Last week I filed my federal and state taxes. The tax preparation service I use here, mostly for backup purposes in case of an audit, informed me by phone that the forms were ready for my signature and that I would owe the federal government just over $1,000. Expecting to pay much more than that,...

It’s May, and the chilly dawn here in Virginia brings singing birds, velvet-soft breezes, and the rich perfume of freshly mown grass and damp earth. I take pleasure and joy in the time I spend on my front porch, sometimes singing a few lines from Louis Armstrong’s “It’s a Wonderful World.” After a few minutes,...

In a recent conversation with an internist, the good doctor asked me whether I’d gotten a COVID-19 vaccine. When I told him ‘No,” he then asked if I intended to get it at all. “Not unless someone forces it on me,” I said. I then asked him the same question. “I got the first injection,...

Though I’ve practiced several vices in my time, pornography was not one of them. I grew up in a town and a time when I didn’t even know the meaning of that word. At the private school I attended in seventh and eighth grade, 200 miles from home, one kid used to smuggle Playboy magazines into the...

“Gloom, despair, and agony on me, Deep dark depression, excessive misery….” Those were the opening lines to a song based skit from the country music and comedy show “Hee Haw” back in the 1970s. Somehow the words and tune have remained stuck in my mind all these years. Those lines sum up my feelings regarding...

I first became a huge fan of Ernest “Papa” Hemingway back in my twenties. I read his short stories, nearly all his novels, and his memoir, A Moveable Feast, recounting the time in Paris when he was just beginning his adventures in fiction. I also read several biographies about him, including Carlos Baker’s classic Ernest Hemingway: A...

A Man For All Seasons is a film for our time. In this classic period drama, Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield), a brilliant writer and intellectual and former Lord Chancellor of England, refuses to approve Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, rejects his decision to break with Rome, and recognize the king as the Supreme Head...