Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
One of the things that struck me today was how many stories involved people pushing back. They’re pushing back against the Black Lives Matter narrative, they’re pushing back against cancel culture, and they’re pushing back against the Wuhan virus lockdown. In other words, after being beaten around the head for a few months, Americans are … Read more
While those who tend to our physical health, who work our grocery stores, who answer their call to duty are so often lauded as noble front-line workers, our country shames a priest working to save our souls. WASHINGTON, DC — Capitol Hill’s Monsignor Charles Pope has the coronavirus. To anyone lucky enough to know the … Read more
Don’t be fooled by universities’ incessant chatter about “diversity.” Most are poster children for ideological conformity and proud of it. The faculty, students, and administrators know it. Indeed, many welcome it since their views are so obviously right and other views so obviously wrong. They believe discordant views are so objectionable that no one should … Read more
Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed to a Catholic martyr who gave his life to minister to the least fortunate Hawaiian natives. Probably knowing little or nothing about his life’s story, she held up this saint and hero of Hawaiian history as as the totem of “white supremacy,” apparently because he was an immigrant. That’s the … Read more
I recently speculated whether Seattle should be considered the worst-governed city in the country. Though there’s lots of competition for that honor from places like San Francisco, Detroit, New York City, and Chicago. And John Stossel makes a compelling case for Minneapolis in this new video. Progressive “Paradise” As I’ve previously noted, statist … Read more
Elites’ endless quest for social status is fueling our present moral panic. There is some mystery about the generation of names. “Gay” becomes “gay and lesbian” becomes “lesbian and gay” becomes LGB becomes LGBTQ becomes LGBTQIAPK becomes LGBTTQQIAAP+. We go from “black” to “Afro-American” to “African American” back to “black” to “Black,” and then to … Read more
If there is one thing which is currently obsessing large swathes of the ideologically globalized world, it is the scourge of systemic racism. It is a matter of unquestioned dogma that such systemic racism is widespread and that it must be purged from society. To question this unquestionable dogma is a heresy which is punishable … Read more
One might think fun, enjoyment, and recreation are merely optional; the icing on the cake of the real stuff of life. This is wrong. Laughter, music, discussion, literature, falling in love, beauty, and pursuing things simply for their own sake are more real and more human than many of the supposed important things. What we … Read more
I wish we had a more scientific profile of social justice activists. My unscientific observations: 1. They tend to be young. Most of the people on my side of the free speech issue are also on my side of 50. I’ve said before that I suspect that heavy usage of social media makes it more … Read more
Cancel culture is antidiscourse, a genre of speech intended not to facilitate the exchange of views and ideas but to prevent such an exchange. ‘Cancel culture isn’t an assault on freedom of speech,” the dishonest argument of the moment goes, “It is free speech.” That isn’t really true, inasmuch as the entire point of “cancel … Read more
At a San Francisco gala in March 2014, Stanford University President John Hennessy accepted an award for the school’s “Advancement in U.S.-China Relations.” The award was granted by the Committee of 100, a group of Chinese Americans in business, government, academia and the arts, and the school boasted about it on its website. Stanford began … Read more
THE RACIAL JACOBINS haven’t eased up in their post-George Floyd ferocity; if anything they are growing more indiscriminate in their determination to enforce political conformity and to punish anything they regard as thoughtcrime. Their targets haven’t been limited to statues of American heroes, editors of prominent newspapers, or professors at leading universities. The toll of … Read more
If you’re wondering why so many people don’t see the world the way you do, engage them in conversation. You will find they are as well-intentioned as you are, but they are looking in a different direction. Beneath their opinions and fears, beliefs are shaping how they see the world. Because of different beliefs, your … Read more
Politically correct etiquette sets boundaries around social class, constantly diminishing the supply of respectable people by casting out delinquents. For urban professionals, the precarity of living on the precipice of cancellation is the price of erecting barriers to entry around their institutions and social spheres. It is no coincidence that the new standards of etiquette … Read more
The class war in our country isn’t a matter of the poor vs. the rich; it’s a matter of business class vs. first class, E-Class vs. S-Class. Where the Left goes, squalor follows. The scene in militia-occupied Seattle is entirely familiar, the same kind of theatrical filth that has been a part of American counterculture … Read more
Madison believed that the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment were the source “for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity, over error and oppression.” Even so, the new nation experienced backslides into censorship from the very beginning. The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed in 1798, and mobs gathered to … Read more
Welcome to the liturgical woke, which eerily feels like off-brand Christianity. . . . At a park in New York City, I witnessed something odd. A group of women silently formed a circle in the middle of a large lawn. Their all-black outfits contrasted with the surrounding summer pastels, and they ignored the adjacent sun … Read more
I am increasingly alarmed by the absence of diversity of opinion on the topic of the recent protests and our community response to them. In the extended links and resources you provided, I could not find a single instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative narrative to explain the under-representation of black individuals in academia or … Read more
The death of George Floyd, an African-American, at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer has sparked weeks of urban protests—some marked by looting and violence—across the United States. It has also brought fierce condemnations of President Donald Trump. New York City mayor Bill de Blasio partly blamed the president for the unrest, noting … Read more
Peter Winkler: Professor Loury, hundreds of thousands of people in American cities have been protesting that police treat black people more harshly than other populations. The reason, they say, is systemic racism. What do you think? Glenn Loury: This is a representation that has developed a life of its own. The claim is: the police … Read more
As an old Cold Warrior, and once “science kid,” whose childhood developed through the 1960s, there is nothing that ought to surprise me. We have Antifa today; we had the Weather Underground then. We have parallels to every event I witnessed through the idiot box of adolescence, and vice versa. Even the destruction of American … Read more
You can’t apologize enough to the woke and the restless. After the actual riots, the metaphorical ones. Reputations get burned down. Careers get their windows smashed in. Character gets assassinated. Much of this has been nearly as senseless, emotion-driven, and inane as the actual burning, looting, and destroying of urban neighborhoods. Attacking Drew Brees for … Read more
Like so many before them, our recent disorders have been rooted in issues of race. But in the longer run, the underlying causes of our growing civic breakdown go beyond the brutal police killing of George Floyd. Particularly in our core cities, our dysfunction is a result of our increasingly large, and increasingly multi-racial, class … Read more
According to Christian teaching, original sin, our ancestral curse, means that none of us — not one — is righteous. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The only way we can restore harmony between ourselves and God is through uniting ourselves to the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, … Read more
If cities defund the police, that won’t necessarily abolish the departments. In fact, the remaining police departments may suddenly have an added incentive to crack down on ordinary citizens. As Shackford notes, “If you don’t account for revenue from fines, fees, and forfeiture, this can all backfire against the poor.” Police departments across the country … Read more