Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
Contrary to popular perception, the medieval papacy challenged the Jew-hatred of its day, in a way Catholics can derive inspiration from today. The Jew-hatred on display at some campus protests corresponds little with attitudes toward Jews in America. But today’s ill-informed protesters on the quad are tomorrow’s managerial elite. Many young Americans of privilege have … Read more
I recently received an email from an old friend, an esteemed academic who is foundering miserably in retirement and senescence. Like many men of his kind, he has taken up politics with a social-media-driven religious devotion and, having tried Donald Trump on for size for a few years, has undergone a conversion to the cause … Read more
Unions are said to be having a moment. The story goes something like this: Helped by a presidential administration that touts itself as the “most pro-union in history,” labor unions — after decades of decline — are winning big victories against anti-union corporations and extracting impressive concessions for their workers. But is it all true? … Read more
Regarding the legal (and legalistic) issues related to the current raft of criminal cases lodged against former game-show host, occasional pornographic-film performer, and disgraced ex-president Donald J. Trump, I commend to you the expert opinions of Dispatch legal analyst Sarah Isgur and frequent Advisory Opinions podcast guest David French of the New York Times. For … Read more
The Nazi cheers of Sieg Heil didn’t start out in Munich, but in Massachusetts. The Nazi chant was borrowed from Harvard football cheers and imported to Germany by Ernst “Putzy” Hanfstaengl, a Harvard man in good standing who befriended Hitler and helped build a more respectable brand for the National Socialists. “Putzy” was one of … Read more
You want to know why violent crime is surging in the nation’s urban centers? Look no further than the radical left’s efforts to “reform” the criminal justice system by pretending that criminals are just a new class of victims whose violence is a product of our systemically racist society. According to them it’s not the … Read more
Just four days ago, the Biden administration launched a new line of attack against former President Donald Trump and his campaign trail promise to hike tariffs if he is elected in November. Those higher tariffs would be “inflation-feeding welfare for the rich” that would raise prices for consumers, according to an Axios summary of a … Read more
UC Berkeley School of Law has some eminent conservative alumni, among them Pete Wilson, former governor of California; Ed Meese, attorney general to Ronald Reagan; and Ted Olson, solicitor general to George W. Bush. It could boast of this fact but doesn’t do so often. The mural in the school’s main foyer features Thelton Henderson, … Read more
When ideology replaces meritocracy or provides immunity from the consequences of illegal behavior, systemic mediocrity follows. Under toxic National Socialism, Stalinism, and Maoism, millions of cronies and grifters mouthed party lines in hopes that their approved ideology would allow them to advance their careers and excuse their lawbreaking. The same thing has happened with the … Read more
The author of Bad Therapy argues that we have created a generation of “emotional hypochondriacs.” Abigail Shrier is author of the best-selling new book Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up. She argues that the mental health of Gen Z—people born between 1997 and 2012—is a mess because an infantilizing therapeutic culture pervades every … Read more
A Palestinian Islamic Jihad spokesman has confessed that terrorists have taken over all of the hospitals in Gaza, using the medical facilities to hide military activities and launch attacks. In a video released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Monday evening, Tarek Abu Shaluf also admitted to an Israeli interrogator from military intelligence that … Read more
A question about race has been on every US Census since the first one in 1790. But not the same question. In response to shifting politics, social attitudes, interest-group pressures, and government priorities, the list of racial categories into which the American government sorts the American people has changed many times. Now it is about … Read more
Bureaucratic bloat aside, has the intellectual well of higher education been poisoned? Colleges are the closest thing we have to progressive societies fully realized, and they increasingly exist as ends unto themselves. The decline of conservative representation among the professoriate is a decades-long phenomenon and has reached its terminus. Like medieval monasteries, progressive universities take … Read more
After spending years serving the needs of the poor and homeless through nonprofit ministry, James Whitford says he learned that “it’s good for nonprofits … to stay away from government funding.” Whitford, the co-founder and CEO of True Charity, a national initiative to reform charity work, started serving the poor through a ministry called Watered … Read more
The UN proudly displays a picture of its top executive getting out of a Gulfstream in Egypt (note the oval windows) Secretary-General @antonioguterres has just arrived in North Sinai, #Egypt. This is his first stop during his annual Ramadan solidarity visit to the region. pic.twitter.com/eCcWIRYKyw — UN Spokesperson (@UN_Spokesperson) March 23, 2024 A first class … Read more
I know because I was one. Last month, conservative news host Jesse Kelly told Megyn Kelly on her podcast that “the mentally ill single woman is the beating heart of the Democrat Party.” He proclaimed over 70 percent of single women vote Democrat. Furthermore, he declared that “studies” show approximately 60 percent of those women … Read more
THE SUN WARMED Alice Volpitta’s cheeks as she turned her face toward the clear April sky. She and a co-worker at Blue Water Baltimore, an environmental nonprofit Volpitta calls a “water watchdog,” had spent the morning collecting samples. It was their first outing since winter. They steered their boat, the Muckraker, to one of their … Read more
The 100-year reign of impeccably credentialed but utterly mediocre meme processors is coming to an end Impostor syndrome isn’t always a voice of unwarranted self-doubt that you should stifle. Sometimes, it is the voice of God telling you to stand down. If, for example, you are an academic with a track record of citation lapses, … Read more
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haidt (Penguin Random House, 400 pp., $30) In 2018’s The Coddling of The American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt contended that kids are inherently “antifragile”—that is, they benefit from adversity. But instead of “preparing the child … Read more
Donald Trump cheated the shareholders of the banks that lent him money out of millions of dollars in interest payments and fees. One of the irritating recurrent features of the discussion surrounding Donald Trump’s New York fraud trial is the insistence that this was a “victimless crime.” On a recent episode of National Review’s “The … Read more
The U.S. government’s nonsensical racial-classification system makes a hash of attempts to use the state to benefit underprivileged groups — and courts are increasingly noticing. Whom is DEI supposed to help and why? This shouldn’t be a trick question, but those responsible for pushing “diversity, equity, and inclusion” haven’t thought much about the answer. And, … Read more
At the heart of everything from the debate over the Gaza War to DEI to toxic interpersonal relationships is a disastrous loop known as the “self-reinforcing victim/villain” cycle. The self-reinforcing victim/villain cycle is a deceptively simple and incredibly destructive paradigm for any kind of relationship, national, communal or personal, in which one party constantly attacks … Read more
It was 1973 in Jerusalem. I was 21 years old walking through the Arab section of the Old City. I was sporting a massive afro and wearing an army jacket with the name “Elder” above the pocket, a gift from my little brother who was serving. I heard footsteps, so I stopped, turned around and … Read more
When Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the “pro-Palestine” propagandists could no longer plausibly refer to it as occupied territory. So they came up with another trope that has become a cliché: Gaza is an “open-air prison.” The jailer in this dubious metaphor is only Israel, (even though Gaza also borders Egypt) and it … Read more
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday praised Americans who are putting pressure on US President Joe Biden to limit support for Israel because they are helping the Lebanese terrorist group’s cause. “Today, what many people demonstrating in America are doing … Of course, we should salute them and be grateful to them,” Nasrallah said in … Read more