The Free Dutchman

  • Serious Consequences for Unserious People

    The way the world ends, T.S. Eliot reminds us, is “Not with a bang but a whimper.” But our country’s seeming slide into the abyss is starting to feel like a roller coaster ride, if not one where the passengers end up safely back at the loading station.

    Mark Vandenberg

  • The Anti-Antifa Handbook (Review of Andy Ngo’s “Unmasked”)

    Reading about Antifa, its modi operandi, its motives, and its insidious influences on our Western societies has been a long-time pre-occupation of yours truly. Growing up in Western Europe there was never any shortage of developments surrounding this topic. But, notwithstanding its dangers back there and then, Antifa’s European activities at the time couldn’t hold…

    Mark Vandenberg

  • No, Trump Won’t Bring About Authoritarianism — But Biden Might

    In this clown world of street riots, critical race theory and cancel culture, Trump represents normalcy. He’s the last man standing between America and a further erosion of its Constitution and its culture.

    Mark Vandenberg

  • A Return To Normalcy Requires the Re-election of President Trump

    Justice Ginsburg’s unfortunately timed death serves as another depressing reminder how despicably polarized our body politic has become. In a period of just four hours it became obvious that few, if any, are even concerned with the Justice’s legacy anymore. Instead, the focus was immediately shifted to the seat she left vacant on the Supreme…

    Mark Vandenberg

  • In Defense of Liberalism (Review Of “Cynical Theories”)

    It is a boring platitude that history has produced its share of intellectual folly. Jean Jacques Rousseau, for example, believed that humans are born a “blank slate” and only corrupted as they grow up in modern society, an assertion he could have known to be insane merely by paying a few hours of attention to…

    Mark Vandenberg
  • White Fragility

    A Tale of Two Narratives: Review of “White Fragility”

    Future historians will be puzzled about ‘White Fragility’ and other such works, and the Orwellian moral panics they helped spur which are ravaging our civilization at the moment.

    Mark Vandenberg

  • Stampede 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…

    Mark Vandenberg

  • The Logical End Result of Postmodernism Is Here

    I’m sure the lockdowns are fanning the flames, as it were, but something else must be going on too. It’s time to drop the pretense that this is about the sad death of George Floyd any longer.

    Mark Vandenberg