A Partisan Memorial
The journalism of the “analytical scoop” comes into its own — From The New Criterion of October, 2011
Monuments to Lost Meaning
On the power of time to abolish and transform our most cherished memories — From The American Spectator of October, 2011
Entry from October 25, 2011
There’s been rather a kerfuffle in the British press in recent days over world-famous atheist Richard Dawkins’s public announcement in The Guardian that he refuses to debate the latest Christian philosopher offering to take him on, William Lane Craig, because the latter “is an apologist for genocide.” Come again? That sounds rather a serious charge, doesn’t…
Entry from October 20, 2011
Although I remain resolute in my determination, mentioned in this space the other day, not to watch the Republican candidates’ “debates,” I have only to look at the next day’s headlines to discover all that I might have learned by watching. Or all that I need to know about their real subject, which is the media….
Take Shelter
A visually and dramatically impressive movie spoiled, in the end by a merely coy unwillingness to lift the artificial curtain between reality and unreality
Entry from October 17, 2011
On the cover of the most recent number of National Review is a photo of a pretty girl amidst a crowd of her fellow Occupy Wall Street protestors holding up a sign reading “Happiness is a Right” with the indefinite article crossed out and the word “your” written in its place. Is it possible that…
Entry from October 13, 2011
Back in 2005, Kevin Mattson wrote in The American Prospect of the big re-think which, as he then saw it, the liberal tendency was undergoing in the dark days just after the last President Bush’s re-election and the defeat of John Kerry in the election of 2004: Who now reads left-wing books from 1968? Just try…
Complicated Loyalty
Eric Felten calls loyalty a “vexing virtue,” but the doubt today more often seems to be whether it is a virtue at all — From Policy Review No. 168 (August/September, 2011)
Entry from October 11, 2011
“Not another debate!” I groaned on learning that the ever-changing dramatis personae of the Republican presidential field would be coming together for the seventh time this evening. Or, if you can groan in quotation marks, it would be: “Not another ‘debate’!” For as a former debate coach, I am routinely outraged by this appalling misnomer…
Entry from October 5, 2011
“Historians Politely Remind Nation to Check What’s Happened in the Past Before Making Any Big Decision” read a headline in the allegedly satirical Onion the other day. With the United States facing a daunting array of problems at home and abroad, leading historians courteously reminded the nation Thursday that when making tough choices, it never…