Don’t be fooled. The battle between Iran and ISIS doesn’t turn Iran into a friend of America. Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam. One calls itself the Islamic Republic. The other calls itself the Islamic State. Both want to impose a militant Islamic empire first on the region and then […]
Archives for August 2015
Planned Parenthood in the Gutter
I’ve been searching for a word to adequately describe what I have seen in the videos released over the past several weeks of Planned Parenthood executives very nonchalantly discussing the harvesting and sale of aborted baby parts. Repugnant comes close, but doesn’t really do justice to the callous, blase, and arrogant attitudes expressed in these […]
Of Flags, Monuments, and History
The flap that has ensued in the wake of the church shootings in Charleston, South Carolina has, it seems, brought an old debate to another level of intense discussion, one that I think can be productive and has so far been mostly civil. Here is my take on it. Despite the often benign use of […]
Economic Growth and Inequality
It’s pretty clear that the issue of economic inequality is not going away as long as we’re being pounded with it every day by the political left in the middle of a presidential campaign. And why not? Several recent polls show that majorities actually favor government balancing of incomes to correct inequality. And a 2014 […]
More Good News for Western Civilization in Texas
Previously I have written about the breakthrough at The University of Texas at Austin when the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Core Texts and Ideas, a great books and Western Civilization studies program on whose advisory board I serve, received 500 applications for fewer than 100 slots in its Jefferson Scholars program for entering freshmen. […]
The Donald
This has never been a letter about electoral politics–who’s in, who’s out, who’s up, who’s down, etc.–and I’m not about to change that. But I can’t pass on the Donald Trump phenomenon because of what it represents about our politics early in the 21st century. I think his popularity with Republicans will ultimately fade, but […]