Archive for August, 2009

Unwinnable War?

Though U.S. force levels are higher than ever, the U.S. military situation is worse than ever. Though President Karzai is expected to win re-election, he is regarded as the ineffectual head of a corrupt regime. Though we have trained an Afghan army and police force of 220,000, twice that number are now needed. The Taliban are operating not only in the east, but in the north and west, and are taking control of the capital of the south, Kandahar.

Of Mary and Crystals

Heather Mac Donald is a very good journalist, and conservatives are in her debt for her work dealing with immigration, crime, and the realities of urban life. But Mac Donald, an atheist, is puzzled by religion. Last Sunday, this puzzlement took the form of a short piece at the Secular Right website, where Mac Donald expressed her shock at seeing a flyer for “one of those creepy painted sculptures of Mary with oversized, tear-encrusted eyes and an undersized mouth” in her apartment building in Manhattan.

Making War

Americans learn their wars primarily through the movies. Who, except for the few who were actually there, can imagine World War II without thinking of John Wayne? The popular medium gives us a way to digest what would otherwise be too terrible to contemplate, to absorb it into the national psyche.

Just Say No—To Healthcare

The healthcare debate is as boring and stupid as every other debate in the United States. Republicans accuse the administration of plotting to impose socialized medicine and compulsory euthanasia, while Democrats retort that their critics, who have not read the proposed legislation, are resorting to demagoguery because they have no effective counter-argument. Suffice it to say that both sides are lying, though some of the mud they are slinging is tacky enough to stick to the wall.

Angry White Men

To hear the Obamaites, those raucous crowds pouring into town hall meetings are “mobs” of “thugs” whose rage has been “manufactured” by K Street lobbyists and right-wing Republican operatives.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs compares them to the Young Republicans of the “Brooks Brothers riot” during the Florida recount.

Orestes I

The Orestes, performed in 408, is one of Euripides’ last surviving plays—the poet died only two years later. It was very popular in the Hellenistic and Byzantine eras, much cited and taught in schools. It is a vivid melodrama (in the modern not the ancient sense), but also a profound and difficult meditation on the meaning of friendship.

Commodity Culture—August 2009

The August 2009 issue of Chronicles. Thomas Fleming on the proper ends of growth, James O. Tate on buying culture, Andrei Navrozov on culture that lasts, and George McCartney on the money-making business of Hollywood. Plus, William J. Quirk on what real economic reform would look like.

Booklog: Euripides’ Orestes

This is a brief note to introduce the next formal Booklog, which will be a discussion of Euripides’ Orestes, a rather strange play that pits the claims of family not only against each other but against those of friendship.  I hope that it can be used to highlight certain older ideas about kinship and friendship [...]

The Wiki Club

Our friends at Takimag have posted an excellent column by John Derbyshire on the sins of Wikipedia.

Clean Jim, Dirty Harry, and Barry the Beer-Drinker

The conservative press lost no time in converting the Henry Louis Gates affair into a morality play that pitted a loose-lipped race-baiting President against a squeaky clean policeman with an excellent record in what is politely termed “minority relations.”