Category: Vital Signs

A recent story in the Press-Enterprise of Riverside, California, gives the lie to the notion that illegal aliens are just here “to do the jobs Americans won’t do” and are largely a law-abiding class of the downtrodden, shifting where they can for work. In May, the newspaper reported that “activists” warn illegal-alien drivers about sobriety...

Who in modern Western society has not heard of that category of citizens honorably known as intellectuals?  They profess to be the thinking part of the nation, the people whose special calling is to ponder public or private matters.  Not possessed of a particularly low opinion of themselves, they even lay claim to a spiritual...

Many of those seeking to understand the Tea Party movement have tried to find historical parallels, and one that has been suggested is the George Wallace movement.  Both movements have comprised voters feeling that the America they grew up in is being taken from them, and their strength in the electorate is roughly comparable.  George...

In June 2009, Alberta’s former minister of finance Iris Evans commented to the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto that, “when you’re raising children, you don’t both go off to work and leave them for somebody else to raise.”  Essentially, Mrs. Evans suggested that parents might need to sacrifice financial well-being for stable families. Needless...

In January, when the Catholic Church in the United States was supposedly devoting all of Her efforts to preventing taxpayer funding of abortion in ObamaCare, America’s Catholic bishops took a distracting detour, announcing a nationwide “Justice for Immigrants” campaign.  Their goal: to distribute millions of postcards to parishes throughout the country so Catholics could demand...

The Supreme Court’s power has become virtually unchecked: Amending the Constitution to reverse an erroneous Supreme Court decision is nearly impossible, and Congress has proved too timid to use the other weapons the Constitution provides to check the Court, including its power to restrict the jurisdiction of the federal courts.  As a result, the Supreme...

If you want to know why it isn’t a bright idea to permit homosexuals to serve openly in the military, consider the subject of “snorkeling.” That, according to The Atlantic, was one of Rep. Eric Massa’s occupation specialties as a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy.  You might have heard of Mr. Massa.  He quit...

Virginia Woolf once wrote that human nature suddenly changed in the year 1910.  Certainly, the accepted idea of what popular entertainment could look and sound like underwent a rude shock on June 25 of that year, when the ballet The Firebird, by 28-year-old Igor Stravinsky, received its premiere at the Paris Opera.  From the small...

Which presidents of the United States have done a job of work?  This little survey is limited to those born in the 20th century.  Before that, everybody worked. Let’s start with our present leader.  He has never lifted a shovel or driven a truck or had to make a payroll.  He has never grown a...

A recent incident at West Point involving my wife and our little daughter has given us much to ponder.  The initial responses, and later silences, of the military authorities were both surprising and perplexing.  I became even more reflective and pensive, however, after my own well-informed and honest and very candid West Point classmates further...

The first issue of The New Yorker (February 21, 1925) showed on its cover a dandy in top hat, high collar, and morning suit gazing through his monocle at a butterfly.  The drawing is reproduced yearly, and butterflies became a cover motif.  Whatever tastes, affectations, or snobbery the artist, Rea Irvin, wanted to suggest, it...

Where is the blues in jazz when we need it?  Throughout most of its history jazz was a blues music, at least until the avant-gardists of the 1960’s tried to burn down the cathedral in their trumped-up revolution against American society, playing music unfocused in concept, unmusical in sound, and unpleasant in performance.  They made...

Bob Dylan, like many of those in the lively arts, frequently urges us to admire his present work rather than to dwell on his past triumphs, although he has been known to make an exception to the rule when it comes time to release his latest greatest-hits package.  Unlike some rock-music critics, I’m happy to...

The financial collapse, which loomed so large more than a year ago as trillions of dollars disappeared and politicians ran for cover, may have suggested a lesson or two.  The chairman and a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, the former head of Goldman Sachs (nice name, that), the president of the United States,...

Most Americans wouldn’t like it if they knew that a foreign government had built a school in the United States which teaches hatred of Americans and their country.  Indeed, most Americans wouldn’t like it if they knew a foreign government had built a school here that teaches hatred of anyone or anything.  Then again, most...

Every couple months or so, my wife and I host an event we call Twice-Baked Tales.  We’ll have friends over for a home-cooked meal followed by a screening of a movie (usually from the 1930’s, 40’s, or 50’s) and its remake.  So far we’ve watched Out of the Past (1947) and its 1984 remake, Against...

This past week, word came to me that a close friend and book-review editor of a major daily newspaper had been laid off after 16 years of service.  The book page, one of the nation’s best, would be reduced by half, and his “replacement” would be a youngster from the city desk, a competent young...

You may be taken aback by the first part of my title, but do not be.  Wool, after all, is that which warms us.  In the Ice Age, pulling wool over the eyes was tantamount to survival.  That sense lingers in the phrase “pull the wool over your eyes”—or their eyes, as we say, referring...

The bicentenary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln has seen the publication of a host of new books and magazine articles celebrating the legacy of the 16th president.  Lincoln’s popularity is probably at its highest point thus far, and Honest Abe is defended by writers on both ends of the political spectrum.  Liberals have been...

What do veterans, drug users, children, and suspected terrorists have in common?  They all have specialized courts to deal with them and their legal issues.  Illinois has become the latest state to set up a special “veterans’ court” to handle veterans charged with nonviolent crimes.  (New York has had a similar program in place since...

It’s a story told regularly in the conservative media.  A student pleads for advice: The professors at his college or university are left-wing, and he must choose between regurgitating the leftist propaganda in class discussions, term papers, exam answers, and essays for an A, or telling the truth for a low grade.  What to do?...

The sale of The Weekly Standard should put paid to any lingering illusion that the neoconservative empire was anything but a Potemkin village.  Allegedly, Rupert Murdoch sold the magazine for one million dollars to Philip Anschutz, the billionaire owner of Clarity Media Group, but the price seems either much too high or much too low. ...

For the life of me, I can’t see why anyone under the age of, say, 55 would want to listen to Bruce Springsteen, never mind revere him as a deep and important artist, or pay upward of $200 to be crammed into a football stadium to attend one of his concerts.  Surely the only pertinent...

In March, Steve Saltarelli, a junior Law, Letters, and Society major at the University of Chicago, wrote a satirical article for the student newspaper, the Chicago Maroon, entitled “Men in Power.”  The subtitle read, “True equality means groups that advocate for men as well as women.”  In the article, Saltarelli jokingly proposed founding an advocacy...

“America was, is, and—we pray—will continue to be the place where more than anyplace else, dreams actually do come true” —William J. Bennett The key phrase to notice in William Bennett’s statement is “more than anyplace else.”  In recent years, a number of well-meaning patriots have taken up the theme of what is called American...

A piece appeared recently in my local newspaper by one Anthony C. Infanti, professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.  He wrote in support of a pending state antidiscrimination bill that would ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and “gender” identity. There’s no urgency in attacking his position or his argument. ...

Should one read Hervey Allen or Anne Rice?  Why should the question be asked at all?  Why might a discriminating reader today even think of picking up either Hervey Allen’s massive best-seller of 1933, Anthony Adverse, or The Feast of All Saints (1979) by Anne Rice, a hugely popular contemporary author?  (Both are still available...

The only time before his presidency when Abraham Lincoln held national office was a single term (1847-49) in the U.S. House of Representatives.  During that time, while debating the Mexican-American War, Lincoln zealously defended the constitutional prerogative of Congress to declare war and enact legislation against a perceived usurpation of these powers by the executive...

Last October, the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to French novelist J.M.G. Le Clézio, the 13th French writer to win since the award’s inauguration in 1901 and the first to win since avant-garde novelist Claude Simon in 1985.  Some of the earlier French winners, such as Albert Camus, André Gide, and Jean-Paul Sartre...

Errol Leslie Flynn was an unlikely icon—thin lipped, beady eyed, and blessed with a mild case of rhinophyma (big-nose syndrome), much exacerbated by booze and age, not to mention an (at one time) impenetrably thick Australian accent.  On meeting the young Flynn, other children would take one look at him and burst into tears.  Despite...

Anyone who has been around for a while and who pays any attention to the news sees many disturbing changes.  Recently, I read a report that two children, ages seven and eight, had an altercation at school during recess.  They were carted off in handcuffs by the police.  The teachers or principal had dealt with...

November, and my undergraduates’ glazed expressions are as good as a calendar.  They’re limping through to Thanksgiving.  So am I, and perhaps my eyes, too, are glazed.  I find myself uneasy about teaching, for the first time in a while.  In my experience this is the way with teaching: a dozen good classes, one after...

Over the course of its 11 years at the helm of the United Kingdom, the Labour Party has acquired a reputation for authoritarianism.  However, even its harshest critics would have doubted the evidence of their senses when awaking one morning to find that an opposition MP had been arrested for releasing information that embarrassed the...

Frummie and his friends were beside themselves a few months ago over the nerve of Vanity Fair.  It quoted them!  And they were surprised that Vanity Fair was . . . unfair.  “Out of context!  Out of context!”  Context, I think someone said, is the last refuge of the scoundrel.  Some of the neo-neos felt...

On September 10, 2008,the New York Times reported that, back in July, President Bush had authorized ground incursions and missile attacks to destroy Taliban and Al Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.  As the Times noted, “It is unclear precisely what legal authorities the United States has invoked to conduct even limited ground...

Last March delivered a double wham­my to the American people.  A few pundits expressed dismay; some parents shook their heads sadly.  Then people moved on. On March 10, California’s 2nd Appellate Court virtually banned homeschooling.  Then on March 11, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene of the Centers for Disease Control announced epidemic levels...

The Report on the Evolution of the Family in Europe 2008, published by the Institute for Family Policies in Madrid, suggests that the family is being closed down and sold off at bargain-basement prices.  In Europe there is an abortion every 27 seconds and a divorce every 30.  There are nearly one million fewer births...

“This all sounds fanatical if people don’t know about it.  I’m not a radical person.” Despite her critics, and despite the rough reelection campaign she faces in Charlotte this fall, U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC, 9th District) has spent the last two years fighting to bring her concerns before Congress and the American people.  In...

Something curious happened in South Carolina on June 10.  While Sen. Lindsay Graham easily prevailed over his challenger, Buddy Witherspoon, garnering two thirds of the vote in the Republican U.S Senate primary, the Democrats (voting on the same day) chose a candidate who everyone admits is well to the right of Graham himself.  Of course,...

Mike Carey was the first “African-American” to head a crew that refereed a Super Bowl—the one in which the sainted Tom Brady got his butt kicked by the lowly Giants.  The term African-American offends me, and should offend all patriots, and probably offends Mike Carey, who is an accomplished entrepreneur and inventor, the CEO of...

In Leviticus, God gives Israel a number of blessings and curses that describe the benefits and consequences of keeping (or failing to keep) the Sinai covenant.  One of the “covenant curses” is curiously descriptive of the jittery culture of fear in which we now live: But if [they] will not hearken unto me, and will...

“Teach him he must deny himself,” said Lee.  That was the general’s advice to a young mother who brought her infant to him after the War Between the States to receive his blessing.  In his classic four-volume biography R.E. Lee, Douglas Southall Freeman chose this as the incident that best exemplifies Robert E. Lee’s message...