Other

How we live now: Blair’s handlers say “we don’t do God”.

Why do so many artists and intellectuals give support to really evil forms of political radicalism? Artists, writers defend Castro. How does one explain the shameless hypocrisy of someone like Garcia Marquez, who says he opposes the death penalty “in any place, for any reason, in any circumstances,” claims to have given secret aid … More ...

Diane Ravitch has written a book complaining about the system of centralized purchasing and “anti-bias” vetting that now ensures that all school textbooks reflect a single bowdlerized multiculturalist point of view. (The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn.) The reviews by neocon Arnold Beichman and moderate liberal Merle Rubin are … More ...

Another snapshot of the self-destruction of thought: “Under this asinine rule we’d never have heard of Darwin.” The “asinine rule” is a quantitative measure of scholarly productivity UK bureaucrats use to allocate funds. Academics get high marks by treating “research” as an industrial product. That sort of research is normally worthless, but such questions fall … More ...

It’s good that the World Council of Churches wrote a letter to Castro regretting a “miscarriage of justice” in a trial of Cuban dissidents. It’s less good that they made a point of saying that their letter was “both friendly and firm in tone.” And the substance of their argument was genuinely bad: authorities should … More ...

There are right-wing as well as left-wing opponents of Christianity. Right-wing opponents—exemplified by the European New Right—blame Christianity for the universalism and radical egalitarianism they believe are destroying the West.

Even if it is those things that are to blame for the current state of the West, the complaint is misplaced. Europeans have been looking … More ...

The relation between civilization and cultural revisionism is paradoxical. On the one hand, revisionism visibly contributes to a decline in civilizational standards—rising crime, declining standards of culture, and increasing crudity and violence in daily life. On the other hand, the most educated, cultured and prosperous places are the most revisionist. The moderately pro-family and pro-faith … More ...

All is not well in academia. From rank-and-file victims of Left politics and academic consumerism, who are choosing early retirement, to superstars of postmodernism and critical theory, who now seem to agree that political engagement doesn’t engage anything, more and more academics are asking themselves “why bother?”

It’s surprising it took them so … More ...

Will this make it big as the next health scare? Environmental plastics and the feminization of Culture. Macho organic health food fans finally have a cause they can call their own.