Enjoying the view from Limbo
President Joe Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki, asked during an official White House propaganda session to address Senator Tom Cotton’s concerns about U.S. colleges being used to “indoctrinate” students, replied smugly — I did not hear her voice, but how else can a progressive sound when defending totalitarianism? — with the following: “Well, without much detail on where he thinks our youth are...
Allow me to state the main conclusions of this essay right up front: I would not care if I never saw another Hollywood movie or television program as long as I lived. I do not think there is a single actor or director in Hollywood today who has enough intelligence or artistic talent to justify my spending thirty minutes or more of my...
The number of people who will disappoint you in your life will vastly outstrip the number who will pleasantly surprise you. Worse yet, many of the former group will come from among the latter, which is particularly painful, as dashed hopes will sting most where hopes were highest. Nevertheless, this does not justify ceasing to seek the rare pleasant surprises. For even the...
Bill Gates, who has devoted much of his adult life to increasingly manipulative efforts to insinuate himself into the private life of every human being on the planet, has suddenly had the tables turned, and found his private life the subject of everyone else’s insinuations. This is poetic justice, to be sure, but not the kind of poetry a decent society would relish....
There is no human being more singularly identified with Donald Trump’s rise from kook fringe primary candidate to viable Republican frontrunner than Steve Bannon. In fact, one could make the case that no one is more responsible for that rise — or more to blame, depending on how you judge the matter — than Bannon. Bannon himself, however, quickly became somewhat estranged from...
Plato presents his teacher, Socrates, as the foremost expert on love and the most erotic of all men, on the grounds that Eros is at base the longing for immortality, thus defining a natural hierarchy of human fulfillments, at the peak of which resides the search for eternal truths, i.e., philosophy. Aristotle, taking the cosmic view, explains the relationship between the world of...
What was the democratic world fifteen months ago? Clearly, it was not what it appeared to be, even to the most hardened skeptics and cynics. It is one thing to believe, as the skeptics and cynics did at that time, that most men, if push came to shove, would choose comfort over freedom, and would succumb to promises of security at the expense...
I recently wrote about Van Morrison’s courageous, legacy-endangering “No More Lockdown” songs, celebrating the sanctity of natural rights and condemning the tyrannical government expansions being imposed in the name of public health. I also explained that the only famous musician to answer Morrison’s call for allies in this daring project was Eric Clapton. Allow me to add one consequential note: Neither man drinks....
The word “culture,” as used with reference to human societies or societal customs, has been one of the key theoretical constructs in late modernity’s assault on being. I never use it, except in the most casual conversational context, without the qualification that the term is artificial, names an idea that is not only ill-defined but perhaps indefinable, and runs counter to the basic...
The true individual is not he who speaks with the voice of his generation, including his generation’s officially sanctioned “outsiders club,” but rather he who speaks against his generation, and especially against the officially sanctioned outsiders club. To stand with one’s group requires neither courage nor thought. To stand against one’s group requires substantial quantities of both. The true visionary is not he...
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