Author: Jeff Minick (Jeff Minick)

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...

“Yes, we have no bananas” was a hit song from the 1920s. Here a Greek fruit vendor answers all questions with “yes,” even when the answer is negative. In today’s America, we have lots of bananas. First, of course, are the curved yellow fruits sold in bunches. You may be living in Alaska or Massachusetts, with a...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

My daughter’s friend—I’ll call her Amanda—never wears a mask anywhere. When the clerk standing outside our local grocery store distributing free masks and hand sanitizer asks if she’d like a mask, Amanda smiles and says “No, thank you.” If he asks, “Are you sure?” she nods and says, “I don’t have to wear a mask....

Though some students have found learning at home relieves them of school’s social stresses, many others miss their teachers, classmates, and the routine of the school day. Some of the little ones have become more defiant and have reverted to bed-wetting, while many older students suffer from depression. In “The Children of Quarantine: What does...

In the 1976 film Network, a newscaster driven to the brink of insanity by his rage exhorts his viewers to throw open the windows of their apartments and homes, and shout “I’m mad as h—, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” Within minutes, thousands of people are roaring these words into the night. In...

Not everyone has a Hallmark Christmas. WebMD’s article “Holiday Depression and Stress” reminds readers that while for most people the holiday season is “a fun time of the year filled with parties, celebrations, and social gatherings with family and friends,” for others the holidays can bring “sadness, self-reflection, loneliness, and anxiety.”         ...

We seem to hear little this year about the arrival of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts in November 1620.   Perhaps the coronavirus is the cause, or maybe the ugly mess and turmoil of our presidential election has overshadowed its remembrance. Or maybe political correctness has claimed another victim.    Whatever the case, the 400th anniversary...

In 1917, wearied and angered by the slaughter on the Western Front, French soldiers marched toward the battlefield past the general staff bleating like sheep, protesting what they correctly surmised would be another blood bath. Later they would openly mutiny against these attacks, willing to defend the front but unwilling to continue charging across No Man’s Land...

It seems a newer virus is now infecting American citizens. It can be deadly, killing off joy, compassion, reason, and objectivity. It renders its victims deaf to argument and blind to facts, creating in some of them so fevered a passion that they wind up in cloud cuckoo land. This virus goes under the name...

Where’d everybody go? Whatever happened to the Jeffrey Epstein case? Traces of the Durham Report, which was investigating those who manufactured the story of Russian interference in the 2016 election, seem to have also disappeared from view. Or what about Hunter Biden? His laptop full of secrets and the possible corrupt practices of his father,...

The growing evidence of massive fraud in the 2020 elections should distress and sicken all voters, Democrats and Republicans alike. Kill voters’ trust in the election process, and you’re putting a knife into the heart of our republic. This whole year has shown that America’s elite maintain a culture that blithely ignores the concerns of...

At 11:00 on the morning of November 11, 1918, the Great War, which some at the time innocently called “The War to End All Wars,” came to an end. The guns fell silent, the murderous slaughter of soldiers and civilians ceased, and the survivors in the trenches and on the battlefields realized they would live...

Joe Biden may have declared victory, but whether he or Donald Trump officially wins the presidency may remain undetermined for weeks, even months, and even then we may see the election brought before the Supreme Court. Who knows? What we do know is that this election has delivered a mess not seen since 2000, when...