I lost business today from a person who was in fear of me having to enter her house. After all, she conveyed, she would need to let the entire place air out for 48 hours before she could set foot in it again herself, so I was told to come back sometime when the novel coronavirus has blown over. Even my promise of mask-wearing and diligent handwashing couldn’t allay her fears. And so another good chunk of revenue went out the door.
Continue readingU.S. politics
America’s Weimar Moment?
It is easy to dismiss the present state of our Republic as yet another momentary crisis which, though perhaps pivotal, will blow over by the end of the year or maybe next. After all, we are the country of the Salem Witch Trials, McCarthyism and the day care sex abuse frenzy of the 1980s. It’s quite possible that this moral panic, too, shall pass without eroding the Constitution.
Continue readingStampede Of the Brainless Smartphone Addicts
Alright, let’s just call the present iconoclasm what it is: a moral panic. Doing so obviously puts one at risk of being placed on the wrong side of history — or worse, being labeled a racist — but a moral panic it is nonetheless.
Those who have been predicting doom and gloom for our Western civilization (such as yours truly) can hardly be surprised by what is going on. As I’ve been saying for a while, our youth have been steeped in a pernicious moral relativism for a dangerously long period of time now. Nothing good could come of it. As Andrew Sullivan noted the other day, “we all live on campus now.”
Continue readingThe Logical End Result of Postmodernism Is Here
The rapidness with which our once beloved country seems to be disintegrating before our eyes is truly astounding. Perhaps we’re all finally losing our heads due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. Why not go out and loot the local Target and burn small businesses to the ground in the name of racial justice?
Continue readingWhere Do We Go From Here?
If the present coronavirus pandemic has exposed one thing in its wake, it is the fragility of our economic interconnectedness and the whirlwind events across the globe can spawn in our own backyard. Whether this crisis will be brought to an end tomorrow or come next Christmas, historians 250 years from now may look back upon this moment as the dawn of a new era.
Continue readingA Remarkable Exercise In Inanity. Review of Arthur C. Brooks’ “Love Your Enemies”
It has been my conviction for a while now that social media and the daily phony outrages they help spur are rewiring our brains as we speak and make us more stupid. (Ever been on Twitter? Yeah.) Moreover, reading the drivel passing for political insight on our feeds makes us desperate to avoid the latest spat involving President Trump when we talk to these Facebook philosophers at an uncle’s birthday party. Better to change the topic to, say, the Patriots’ ‘Deflate Gate’. It’s bound to get some voices raised, but at the end of the day that feels better than having to battle accusations of secretly cherishing Nazi sympathies.
Continue readingTop-Heavy Liberalism (Book Review)
During a good chunk of the mid-twentieth century the great conservative giants of that era argued over the question of what conservatism is. For Russell Kirk it transcended particular cultures and was, in the words of Bradley Birzer, “a natural longing to preserve the best of human thought as divined by, through, and across the slow process of the experience of humanity, tied to an omnipotent source of creation.” To Robert Nisbet, in contrast, conservatism was a modern phenomenon formed in reaction to the French Revolution and essentially launched single-handedly by Edmund Burke.
Brett Kavanaugh, Identity Politics, and the Descent Into Ochlocracy
If a sigh of relief can be heard whooshing through these United States after the Kavanaugh debacle has come to an end, it’s surely to be followed shortly by a scratching of heads over the question of how it got this far. There is no doubt that the battle over Justice Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court has left wounds that extend far beyond its losers, such as Dianne Feinstein, that loathsome Michael Avenatti, and the Democrats in general. Amidst the rubble, a larger meaning of what took place can be found by the discerning eye.
Spiking the Punch For the Dark Road Ahead
The Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation debacle is yet another solid reminder that we live in spectacularly depressing times. Two separate allegations having failed, for once, to crack the collective spines of the Republicans on Capitol Hill and derail Kavanaugh’s nomination to the nation’s highest court, Michael Avenatti, that self-aggrandizing ambulance chaser, has just become the latest to add to this bonfire of the vanities.
The Free Dutchman 