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...
Are we witnessing the end of justice and equality before the law in America? On April 15, the Department of Justice announced that the still-unnamed police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt during the protests at our Capitol in early January would not be charged with her death. We still have no real explanation as to why the...
In the driveway sits my nine-year-old Honda Civic, which I purchased two years ago after a deer demolished my Accord. Fingerprints of my grandchildren dot the rear interior window, the carpeting and seats are screaming for a vacuum, a large, reddish dent mars the paneling above the rear tire on the passenger side, and the...
Recently while driving from town to my house, I was running through some radio stations when I landed on the Glenn Beck show. His guest was Lara Logan, a journalist and commentator unfamiliar to me, and I was sickened and horrified by what I heard. I wish I were exaggerating, but what that woman had...
A look around at our coronavirus-obsessed world leaves those of us still possessing common sense with one question: What on earth have we become? This question arises when viewing videos such as this one, where a pregnant, Catholic mother refusing to wear a mask is cited for trespassing during a Mass in Dallas, Texas. This young...
Last week I invited my young neighbors, Becca and Sam, and their two little girls to supper. I prepared lasagna and salad, and Becca and Sam brought wine and freshly baked bread. After supper, the girls entertained themselves with the Lincoln Logs and Play-Mobile sets I keep handy for my grandchildren, and we adults passed...
Two recent mass shootings in Atlanta, Georgia and Boulder, Colorado, have once again roused those whose goal is to destroy the Second Amendment. Before the bodies of the slain were buried, before the bereft were given even a day or two for grieving, these politicians and commentators were calling for new restrictions on gun ownership....
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
This week I celebrated my 70th birthday. I like the sound of 70. In terms of human years that number seems possessed of dignity and wisdom, and though I may lack both attributes, 70 provides a façade leading others to think that age has endowed me with these prizes. Regardless, I have reached the age when...
Back in the 1990s, I was a Sunday school teacher, a member of my parish council, a small-business owner, and a leader in my sons’ Cub Scout pack. I even put in a year coaching five-year-olds in soccer, though what I knew about the sport could have been penned on a “Sticky Note,” one of...
This week an older reader, Ed, sent me an email lamenting the current state of education in our country. He gave several examples, including “I remember when I was about nine years old, my dad who didn’t finish the Sixth Grade had to help my brother with Eighth Grade spelling.” Ed’s email took me back...
Rush Limbaugh passed away on Ash Wednesday at age 70. I heard that news on the radio after leaving noon services at my church. At first, I felt a profound sadness and a touch of anger. The past year has thrown a barrage of punches at Americans. For those who loved Limbaugh’s program—I only listened...
In C.S. Lewis’s novel about totalitarianism, That Hideous Strength, we find this line, “Qui verbum Dei contempserunt, eis auferetur etiam verbum hominis,” which translates, “They that have despised the word of God, from them shall the word of man also be taken away.” This line occurs in a passage during which an elite who dreamed...
Accounts from individuals, many unknown to Americans, who gave their treasures and lives to defy totalitarianism fill Rod Dreher’s latest book, Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents. Their stories should inspire all of us in the age of fear and fraud we now inhabit. But there’s one problem—a huge problem—with Dreher’s take on...
Every once in a while, I speak by phone with the editors of some of the publications I write for. In my most recent conversations with two of them, they conveyed the same basic message. They reminded me they want articles with a positive vision of the future. Realistic, but without the doom and gloom...
1959: I was eight years old. Had someone told me I would one day own and operate a bed-and-breakfast, homeschool my kids, and possess a laptop that allowed me to write instant letters to far-away friends or read newspapers from England, such predictions would have boggled my mind. “Homeschool,” “laptop,” and so on were words...
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Each morning’s internet headlines bring a new version of crazy. This morning was no different. In her article “PETA: Using Animal Names as Verbal Insults Is Supremacist Language,” Catherine Smith reports that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is decrying the use of insults and anti-animal slurs...
It’s after 4 o’clock on a Monday afternoon, and I just walked to my mailbox and received a check from the federal government for $600. And I am furious. Here are a few reasons why. First, I am self-employed. I work eight to nine hours every day, seven days a week, writing articles for outfits...
“There is more than one way to burn a book,” Ray Bradbury once said. “And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” Bradbury wrote the novel Fahrenheit 451 about a world that systematically burned books. In late December, I resolved to try and read more books than those I review for Western North...
“COVID is where you die.” So said my three-year-old grandson, John Henry, when I asked him what he knew about COVID-19. Like many of my readers, I come across online articles warning of the negative effects of the virus on young people nearly every day. While only a tiny number of them have died from...
Here’s the answer to that question right off the bat: Joe didn’t go anywhere. Instead, our culture, our lawmakers, our pundits, and others made him invisible. They have erased Average Joe. And Average Josephine too, for that matter. Who today really speaks for the barber in Weaverville, North Carolina who just spent eight hours on...
At the Jan. 6 rally in Washington D.C., those of us entering the VIP section were required to throw our tote bags in the trash. We divvied up various items, threw the rest away, and entered the grounds. When we left the rally, someone had emptied all of those cans onto the street and the...
On Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2021, 25,000 National Guard soldiers will be assembled in Washington D.C., ostensibly to protect our nation’s capitol from rioters and insurrectionists. Various federal agencies requested the Guard, and governors from across the United States complied with that request. Hundreds more federal and local law officials will also stand watch in...
I taught seminars in Latin, history, composition, and literature to homeschool students in Asheville, North Carolina for more than 15 years, including Advanced Placement courses. As a result, students often asked me to write college recommendation letters for them, such as letters for the Common Application, or Common App as it is known. Though I...
Satan is described as “the father of lies” in John 8:44 of the New Testament. Whether we think of Old Scratch or not, most of us would agree we live in an age of deceit. Many citizens have abandoned common sense and reason for theory and wishful concoction, contending that black is white or that...
In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows. There was much game hanging outside the...
I left the house at 5:00 a.m. on Jan. 6 along with my daughter and two of her teenage children. We hit the road for D.C., joining up with a few other families on our way. When we arrived near the rally point, the vast lawn below the Washington Monument was already filling with participants....
In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote of the American Revolution, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” His words fit 2020-2021 like a glove. As we all know, our country is in turmoil. We have battled a virus for almost a year, wearing masks and suffering lockdowns, with dubious results. Fraud and deceit marked our...