Liberals
August 19, 2017 — John Hinderaker
I know, the competition is stiff. But I think we have a winner. At the University of Southern California, activists have pointed out that the horse that the school’s Trojan mascot rides around the football stadium on has almost the same name as Robert E. Lee’s horse! The Los Angeles Times reports: When Richard Saukko galloped his chalk-white Arabian horse named Traveler around the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum almost 56
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August 16, 2017 — John Hinderaker
Fanny Hill was the first pornographic novel written in English. It was authored by John Cleland (who, as far as I know, never wrote anything else) and published in 1748. Among other things, Fanny Hill is famous for the fact that it doesn’t contain any bad words. Pornographers were a lot more inventive in those days. Nevertheless, it was, in former centuries, one of the most frequently banned books. I
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August 12, 2017 — Steven Hayward
The Wall Street Journal ran an excerpt from Mark Lilla’s new book, The Once and Future Liberal, coming out on Tuesday that we mentioned here yesterday. Here’s a link to the whole piece if you are a WSJ subscriber, but if not here are two of the better paragraphs in it: As a teacher, I am increasingly struck by a difference between my conservative and progressive students. Contrary to the stereotype,
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August 11, 2017 — Steven Hayward
When I see things like the meltdown at Google or any of the various campus disgraces that can be mentioned, I like to ask: “When are liberals going to defend liberalism?” One liberal who is standing up for liberalism is Mark Lilla of Columbia University. As noted here back in November, Lilla wrote an op-ed for the New York Times criticizing the Democratic Party’s reliance on identity politics. For this,
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August 9, 2017 — Steven Hayward
You know what they say about a stopped clock being right twice a day? Tom Friedman, the New York Times‘s second most predictably dismal columnist, had one such moment in yesterday’s column. You knew something was up from the lede, which began with “I was talking the other day to. . .” Already you’re groaning: will it be a taxi driver, a celebrity intellectual, or the Swiss store clerk with
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August 3, 2017 — Steven Hayward
One thing that is reliable about liberal policy ideas is that they will generate unintended consequences and perverse results, 95 out of 100 times. So of course one might have predicted that the move to “ban the box” asking about criminal convictions on employment application forms would result in increased racial discrimination. And now we have the social science to back up this common sense perception. From the Quarterly Journal
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July 29, 2017 — John Hinderaker
There have long been similarities between politics in the United States and politics in the United Kingdom. For example, one could argue that Ronald Reagan = Margaret Thatcher, George H.W. Bush = John Major, and Bernie Sanders = Jeremy Corbyn. Recently, though, the parallels have been rather uncanny. Here in the U.S., Democrats have refused to accept the results of the November 2016 election. They view President Trump as illegitimate
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July 27, 2017 — John Hinderaker
HBO has announced that the team that produces Game of Thrones will, when that series concludes next year, take on a new project: a series called Confederate. The premise of Confederate is that the South prevailed in the Civil War, and now, in the 21st century, slavery still exists there. HBO’s initial publicity for the new program drew some criticism, so the network’s programming president, Casey Bloys, met with the
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July 25, 2017 — John Hinderaker
We usually don’t bother to deconstruct the craziest excesses of the modern Left, because life is too short–we might only live to be 100 or so–and we write for an intelligent audience. Still, sometimes it is worth noting how far over the edge American liberals have gone. Earlier today, I wrote about President Trump’s speech to the Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia last night. I didn’t mention that many
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July 24, 2017 — Steven Hayward
I’ve observed recently that the election of Trump has driven environmentalists out of their minds. But that happens to mentalists of every kind, not just the enviro-version of mentalists. For years people have asked me, “Why are environmentalists always harping about the end of the earth?” Basic answer: Because it makes them happy. Think I exaggerate? Nothing used to send environmentalists into a rage faster than when I started pointing
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July 16, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Some years ago the evangelical scholar Mark Noll wrote an influential book titled The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. It was a critique of the lack of intellectual seriousness and depth among his fellow evangelicals, and a clarion call to for evangelical thinkers to step up their game. Christianity Today named it the “Book of the Year” in 1994, and it provoked far-reaching and long-lasting discussion among evangelicals. I wonder
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July 10, 2017 — John Hinderaker
I wrote here about President Trump’s excellent Warsaw speech and the Left’s unhinged response to it. One of the liberals whom I quoted protested that she doesn’t hate Western civilization. Perhaps not. Perhaps she only hates any defense of Western civilization. Sort of like the anti-anti-Communists of the cold war. Kurt Schlichter lays it on the line, as quoted by Glenn Reynolds: Let me throw down this marker: The West
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July 8, 2017 — Steven Hayward
I join John in utter amazement (though not surprise) about the left’s freak out over Donald Trump’s defense of the West in his terrific Warsaw speech. From the reaction John and others have highlighted, you’d have thought Trump had called Russia an “evil empire” or something. (Heh.) I hope Trump continues this theme, and provides the left with more beclowning opportunities. If this keeps up Trump is going to carry
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July 8, 2017 — John Hinderaker
President Trump’s superb speech in Poland has been praised by most observers, including Paul. On the Left, however, Trump’s speech has been criticized for its principal virtue, the president’s spirited defense of Western civilization. Here are some of the many such instances. Amanda Marcotte writes at Salon: “Trump’s alt-right Poland speech: Time to call his white nationalist rhetoric what it is.” Trump argued that Western (read: white) nations are “the
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July 4, 2017 — Steven Hayward
My favorite indictment against King George III in the Declaration of Independence is this short passage that applies more fully today than in 1776: He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance. Yep. That’s why this is the feel good story of the day, even though CBS surely doesn’t think so: Meanwhile, the next time
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June 30, 2017 — John Hinderaker
Earlier this month, the U.S. Conference of Mayors vowed to change the Earth’s climate: Mayors from across the country…pledged Friday to take the lead in reducing the nation’s carbon footprint after President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. “There will still be leadership from the United States,” Brainard said in a call with reporters organized by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. “It’s going to come from the mayors
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June 22, 2017 — John Hinderaker
E. Stanley Hoff of Westerville, Ohio appeared in court yesterday, charged with threatening to “assault, kidnap, or murder a United States official.” The Columbus Dispatch reports: A voice mail that threatened U.S. Rep. Steve Stivers and his family landed a Westerville man in federal court Wednesday, charged with a crime that carries a 10-year prison term if he is convicted. In the voice mail that authorities said was left with
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