September 18, 2021 — Steven Hayward
I make a triumphant return as host this week, and after some of the ritual lover’s quarrel over whisky (including a celebration of my happy place—see nearby pic), Lucretia and I get down to the main business, which is slagging the left, and taking on the problem of “scientific expertise” in modern government. We begin with an update on the egregious 1619 Project, with a look at a long essay
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September 18, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Well, it’s been a bad week, what with the California recall failing miserably, news of a “Seven-Days-in-May” scenario playing out in the closing weeks of the Trump Administration courtesy of General Thoroughly Modern Millie, and more COVIDery from Slow Joe and His Crew. But at least we have the Met Gala! Liberals are always great for free entertainment on the hypocrisy front. And AOC is the gift that keeps on
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September 16, 2021 — Steven Hayward
These ought to be the green salad days for the climatistas. They are within an ace of getting a cornucopia of “Green New Deal” spending enacted by Congress, but more importantly corporate America has thrown in the towel, and pledged its fealty to the Climate Catechism of “carbon net-neutrality” by mid-century if not sooner. This includes even major carbon-based energy companies like Exxon-Mobil, who have essentially announced their agreement to
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September 16, 2021 — Steven Hayward
We should never be surprised at what handouts and special interest giveaways will be found in the fine print of the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion spendapalooza blowout bill, but would you believe it even includes subsidies for newspapers? Here it is. In plain English, the federal government will pay the employer’s side of the payroll tax for “news journalists,” or, to use equally plain English, “Democrats with bylines.” And that’s not
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September 15, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Paul and Scott have already noted the prominent reasons why the Newsom recall failed, and failed badly. This is worse than a rout: it is going to embolden California progressives to push their agenda even harder. Let us recall that even Nate Silver, a month ago, thought Newsom was in genuine peril: Then came Larry Elder, who was unknown outside the conservatives who listen to talk radio. He was the
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September 15, 2021 — Steven Hayward
• These first few charts from the great Zach Goldberg are a couple years old, but it is worth aggregating them again to demonstrate how wokery broke out from the campus and took over the media. But could this be a woke bubble about to burst? Surveys show large majorities of Americans hate this business. • The economy continues to be weird. Or in bar chart form: Contrary indicator: if
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September 13, 2021 — Steven Hayward
I am resisting a daily picture gallery, even though I have the inventory for it. I don’t have the time for it, and in any case, I believe in the less-is-more theory, so I try to stay disciplined to just Saturday, with an occasional detour to charts and graphs. But then you see Biden on 9/11, posing with a bunch of MAGA kids in what has to be an amazing
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September 13, 2021 — Steven Hayward
This is the kind of “well, duh!” headline that sends me to the bar early: Natural gas and electricity markets were already surging in Europe when a fresh catalyst emerged: The wind in the stormy North Sea stopped blowing. The sudden slowdown in wind-driven electricity production off the coast of the U.K. in recent weeks whipsawed through regional energy markets. Gas and coal-fired electricity plants were called in to make
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September 11, 2021 — Steven Hayward
The left (i.e., the Biden Administration and the media) like to say that the greatest threat to America today is internal. They may ironically be correct about this. I’ve been wondering or expecting that we’d hear from Ward Churchill in the New York Review of Books or somewhere today, but it seems we’ve found a worthy successor for the fake indian: Will it surprise anyone to learn that Jackson is
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September 11, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Lucretia assumes hosting duties for this week’s potpourri of a show because I am recovering from major surgery, which I relate at the show opening today. (It includes a theological dimension!) But while I’m improving, the recall effort against California Gov. Gavin Newsom appears not to be. I explain the reasons why the polls show a strong turnaround in Newsom’s favor over the last week to 10 days, and why
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September 11, 2021 — Steven Hayward
The most incredible thing about the many incredible things to note on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 is who is leading the country right now. You’d be forgiven the mordant thought that the 9/11 attackers succeeded in their larger aims. More on this scene later today. Headlines of the week: And finally. . .
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September 8, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Peter Boghossian is (actually, after today, was) a professor of philosophy at Portland State University, and although he has always considered himself a progressive liberal, he has become completely alienated from our university culture today. His resignation letter to Portland State Provost Susan Jeffords is up at Bari Weiss’s popular Substack channel, and I encourage you to read the whole thing if you have time. I am glad to see
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September 7, 2021 — Steven Hayward
The Wall Street Journal has a long feature up today on the fact that in larger and larger numbers men have decided not to go to college. But despite its length and depth, the story is too chicken to investigate what may be the leading cause of this trend. Let’s take in some excerpts: Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by
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September 5, 2021 — Steven Hayward
I’m a regular reader of Barron’s Magazine, because it’s one of the better financial publications around, though they have been going a bit wobbly lately on climate change and other corporate wokery. But then there’s Barren Magazine, a tiny literary magazine I never heard of that specializes in what it calls “introspective lit.” Their “About” page reassures is that they are on the side of the true and the good:
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September 5, 2021 — Steven Hayward
We commented last week on how our “nation builders” thought it was important for Kabul University to have a master’s program in gender studies, but it turns out someone had the bright idea that modern art was also a necessity for Afghan women, starting with Duchamps’ “contextual art” urinal (from a 2015 British documentary—just 43 seconds long, but take in the looks on the faces of the Afghan women subjected
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September 5, 2021 — Steven Hayward
It was seven years ago that Rolling Stone magazine ran the 9,000-word cover story on an alleged rape at the University of Virginia that turned out to be a complete hoax. (File it next to Dan Rather’s Texas Air National Guard story.) Well, it looks like Rolling Stone has done it again. I don’t know what’s up with the controversy over the use of ivermectin, normally a drug treatment for
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September 4, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Next Tuesday, Encounter Books will publish Glenn Ellmers’ magisterial intellectual biography The Soul of Politics: Harry Jaffa and the Fight for America, and Glenn joins us this week to walk through some of the highlights in the book in what is turning out to be a month-long “Jaffapalooza.” Naturally, we draw Glenn into our running argument about the problems of communicating the proper understanding of the principle of equality in an
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