Enjoying the view from Limbo
Alfie Evans is being killed by the British government. Specifically, the plan is to hurry the gravely ill child to death by forced starvation. How forced? Pope Francis has a Vatican jet on standby to take the boy to Rome and feed him, a plan both of Alfie’s parents prefer — but a British judge has declared that Rome has “no jurisdiction” over...
A man has killed ten innocent pedestrians in Toronto in a style of mass killing that has been occurring with increasing frequency in recent years, the vehicular attack. Each time, public officials speak gravely about the terrible loss of life, and about how this sort of crime has to stop. But each time, they blissfully ignore the root of the problem: vans. Every...
A nation that no longer lives in accordance with any of the principles and standards that properly defined it may be said to have expired, for all intents and purposes. With that sobering thought, I present a few notes on the current American political climate: In response to my recent essay on the sad, compromised version of Senator Ted Cruz now on display...
As I have written on numerous occasions, socialism (aka “democratic socialism”) is, at its core, beyond all the rhetoric about equality, caring for the weak, people before profits, and so on, a political ideology — not a theory or hypothesis, but an ideology in the Marxist sense — based on one simple notion: the individual human being is property of the State. Allow...
As reported at the Daily Beast, a new book written by journalist Amy Chozick, who traveled with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, revisits an important, conveniently-forgotten theme of the 2016 U.S. presidential election: during the primaries, the Clintons and their media allies were all in for Trump. From early on, the Clinton camp saw Trump as an enemy to encourage, Chozick writes. During the campaign…...
Time Magazine’s 2018 list of the one hundred most influential people has been revealed — I know, finally! I thought I’d lose my mind with anticipation! — and not surprisingly, Donald Trump made the list. What may be surprising, however, is that the accompanying celebrity write-up about Trump was penned by none other than Lyin’ Ted, aka Senator Cruz. Many of his supporters...
“August 2, 1914: Germany has declared war on Russia. Went swimming in the afternoon.” (Franz Kafka, diary entry) Tuesday morning, needing something to read while my graduate students wrote their midterm exam, and having been somewhat guiltily perusing Kafka’s diaries lately — I hope he doesn’t mind, though I suspect he does — I selected a rereading of “The Metamorphosis” as my amusement....
One of the arguments being widely used to justify the latest U.S.-led assault against Syria is that chemical weapons have “no place in our world.” In a typical example of this argument on display at American Thinker, the author declares, “For civilized people of the world, the use of chemical weapons is utterly unacceptable.” Perhaps it is. And what of it? There is...
All too often these days, conservatives and libertarians have taken to adopting synoptic views of the history of ideas aimed at dividing all philosophers neatly into two political camps: pro- vs. anti-liberty, or, more precisely, pro-liberty vs. pro-tyranny. And within this (in my view) misleading dichotomy, it is customary to prove one’s philosophical mettle by setting Plato atop the pro-tyranny list. Indeed, he...
Well, well, how are the anti-Deep-State, drain-the-swamp Trump cultists going to deal with this? (The same way they deal with everything, of course: “Chess!”) Within the past few hours, Donald Trump has pardoned neoconservative martyr Lewis Libby and ordered strikes on Syria in defense of no known U.S. interests. Talk about a cry for help! I’m awaiting Bill Kristol’s endorsement, undoubtedly coming soon....
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