Talking to Themselves
The media just don’t seem to be able to see beyond their naive constitutional attachment to government by brainiacs — From The New Criterion of September, 2014
Oneself in Others
The unintended consequences of reading George Eliot — From The Weekly Standard of September 22, 2014
Removing the Magic from Mozart
Remembering how people once looked at the world must be subversive of the way we look at it now — From The American Spectator of July-August, 2014
Entry from August 26, 2014
"The law supposes that your wife acts under your direction." When at the end of Oliver Twist, Mr Bumble the Beadle is informed of what was formerly known as the Principle of Coverture under English Common Law, he replied in words that have echoed down the years since his own time: "If the law supposes that,"…
Entry from August 7, 2014
How wonderfully appropriate that the tape of Bill Clinton speaking in Australia on September 10, 2001, "just hours before the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon," should have emerged from the sink of time at the same moment as reports of the death of Theodore Van Kirk, navigator on the B-29, "Enola…
Entry from July 31, 2014
In the British media at this time of high international tension and the imminent prospective break-up of the United Kingdom, it sometimes seems as if female sensitivities and resentments are the only topic of conversation. I confess to a certain thrill of pleasure to see that Richard Dawkins has stepped in deep doo-doo by purporting…
America: Imagine the World Without Her
Another foray by Dinesh D’Souza into the lists in order to break a lance on President Obama — and Howard Zinn. At least the latter is effectively unhorsed.
Entry from July 24, 2014
The other day Ann Hornaday, film critic for the Washington Post, had an interesting piece in the paper, inspired by Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, in which she asked why, much as she admired the film, it fell into a now-familiar pattern of "darkening" in movie adaptations of stories and characters that began…
Entry from July 16, 2014
This summer I once again presented, on behalf of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Hudson Institute in Washington, a series of six movies shown at the Hudson Institute. The general theme this year was Middle America and the Movies. The series concluded on Tuesday, July 15th with a screening of Breaking Away…
Breaking Away (1979)
[See discussion under “My Diary” for July 16, 2014]