Category Archives

Archive of posts published in the category: Culture

Knee Jerk Ideology

from David Daley in Salon, Camille Paglia takes on Jon Stewart, Trump, Sanders: “Liberals think of themselves as very open-minded, but that’s simply not true!” excerpt: I don’t demonize Fox News. At what point will liberals wake up to realize the

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Politics as Religion

from David Daley in Salon, Camille Paglia takes on Jon Stewart, Trump, Sanders: “Liberals think of themselves as very open-minded, but that’s simply not true!” excerpt: I’m speaking here as an atheist. I don’t believe there is a God, but

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Side Stepping The Constitution

From Rand Simberg at PJ Media, How Republics Die: But the Founders foresaw this sort of thing. That is why they put a provision into the founding document to deal with it. The proper way to address the issue, in terms

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Better Populists

from The Sunday New York Time Book Review, Revolutionary Roads by George Packer; a review of By the People by Charles Murray and  Wages of Rebellion by Chris Hedges: excerpts: But the most interesting aspect of these two books is

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Liberty and Liberalism

“The fact that this book was originally written with only the British public in mind does not appear to have seriously affected its intelligibility for the American reader. But there is one point of phraseology which I ought to explain

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Consumers of Excess

from the New York Times Sunday June 28, 2015, All in the Family Guys– an interview with Set McFarlane and Norman Lear: SM: Not today. If you make a thoughtful statement, or even ask a question about an uncomfortable subject today,

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A Last Opportunity Denied

From Townhall Walter Williams writes The True Black Tragedy excerpts: The minimum wage law and other labor regulations have cut off the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. Put yourself in the place of an employer, and ask: If I must

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Uberization of America

From Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, Driving Uber Mad As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, “There’s an Uber for everything now. Washio is for having someone do your laundry, Sprig and SpoonRocket cook your dinner and Shyp will

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Confusion of Virtue

From the New York Times, Weary of Relativity by Frank Bruni excerpts Set the bar low enough and all blame is deflected, all shame expunged. Choose the right points of reference and behold the alchemy: naughty deeds into humdrum conformity.

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Poverty Pathology

From Townhall Walter Williams writes The True Black Tragedy excerpts: Today the overwhelming majority of black children are raised in single female-headed families. As early as the 1880s, three-quarters of black families were two-parent. In 1925 New York City, 85

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Stepford Students

From The Spectator, Free speech is so last century. Today’s students want the ‘right to be comfortable’ by Brendan O’Neill; If your go-to image of a student is someone who’s free-spirited and open-minded, who loves having a pop at orthodoxies,

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Rolex and Timex

Kevin Williamson writes in National Review, Who Boycotts Walmart Excerpts: It is easy to scoff, but I am ready to start taking the social-justice warriors’ insipid rhetoric seriously — as soon as two things happen: First, I want to hear

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Intellectually Medieval

Kirsten Power writes in the USA Today, Liberals’ Dark Ages Excerpts: Don’t bother trying to make sense of what beliefs are permitted and which ones will get you strung up in the town square. Our ideological overlords have created a

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The Cycle of Corruption

From Daniel Greenfield’s excellent blog, Sultan Knish, The Inequality of Access: Excerpts: Campaigns against income inequality invariably become mandates for corruption as aggrieved voters convinced that the system is rigged against them embrace the unfair advantage that they believe they are

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Dr. Dre and Inequality

Dr. Dre (stage name for Andre Young) has hit the jackpot. From very modest beginning in Compton, California to success as a rap star to entrepreneur in the development of Beats headphones, he has discovered a market niche- high end

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Inconvenient Social Realities

Robert Marano and Michael Crouch write in the Wall Street Journal –Ignoring an Inequality Culprit: Single-Parent Families Excerpts: The two-parent family has declined rapidly in recent decades. In 1960, more than 76% of African-Americans and nearly 97% of whites were

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A Progressive Dilemma

John Stossel writes in Townhall, The War on Women: Insurance companies still charge men more for car and life insurance. A survey of car insurance companies found that the cheapest policy for a woman cost 39 percent less than for a man.

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American Capitalism and Charity

Jeff Jacoby writes ‘Tis better to give, but some give more in The Boston Globe: Excerpts: WHEN IT comes to charitable giving, America is a world-beater. According to Giving USA, an annual compendium of national data on philanthropy, Americans last

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Is Democracy A Prerequisite for Innovation ?

Eamonn Fingleton writes in the New York Times America The Innovative?, 3/31/13 Excerpts: Few of the most creative societies of the ancient world were free. Certainly not Mesopotamia or Egypt. As for the spectacular creativity of early modern Europe, this

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Perpetuating Cynicism and Paranoia

from the New York Times Magazine by Naggie Koerth-Baker,  Sure You Saw a Flying Saucer (hard copy) or Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories in the online version. Excerpts: Since Hofstadter’s book was published, our access to information has

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