Archive for October, 2010
The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton
“In the twentieth century you could not see the ground for clever men. . . . And all these clever men were at work giving accounts of what would happen in the next age.” The discussion of prophetic literature with which Chesterton begins The Napoleon of Notting Hill is itself an accurate piece of prophecy.
Stomping Women
This is politics in America. Item One: NBC’s Matt Lauer asks the the California gubernatorial candidates if they will stop negative ads, and when Meg Whitman declines, she is booed by women. This is supposed to mean something, when feminists and lesbians boo a Republican woman. But feminists hate women and to the extent they [...]
Nazis in the Strangest Places
Last night, on the recommendation of friends, my wife and I went to see Secretariat. We both thoroughly enjoyed this wholesome, well-made movie, that manages to be suspenseful even though most moviegoers already know that Secretariat won the Triple Crown in 1973. I should have realized that any movie I enjoyed would make someone else [...]
Eastern Europe Versus the Open Society
Two weeks ago the first “gay pride parade” was staged in Belgrade. Serbia’s “pro-European” government had been promoting the event as yet another proof that Serbia is fit to join the European Union, that is has overcome the legacy of its dark, intolerant past.
Ground Zero Mosque: Correcting the Non-Debate
Two sets of fallacies have dominated the mainstream debate about the Ground Zero mosque—and before we go any further, let’s get this straight: it is a mosque, frantic insistence by the Qusling elite to use one euphemistic misnomer or another notwithstanding.
Women’s Work II
It is a feminist truism that women have always worked. By work is not meant so much the routine tasks of the household—the storage and preparation of food, the making and cleaning of clothing, and the household chores of sweeping, cleaning, and tending children—but the degraded and degrading concept of work as a job for which one is paid or even something one would not do except for money.
Tea Party Tory
Before the Tea Party philosophy is ever even tested in America, it will have succeeded, or it will have failed, in Great Britain. For in David Cameron the Brits have a prime minister who can fairly be described as a Tea Party Tory.
Tribalism Returns to Europe
Is Europe’s adventure in international living about to end? At Potsdam, Germany, this weekend, Chancellor Angela Merkel told the young conservatives of her Christian Democratic Union that Germany’s attempt to create a multicultural society where people “live side by side and enjoy each other” has “failed, utterly failed.”
An Ambiguous Victory for Wilders
The news just in that Dutch prosecutors have changed their mind about prosecuting Geert Wilders for the Orwellian crime of “discriminating against Muslims” and “inciting hatred” is prima facie a victory for free speech and all that. In fact it is not nearly as good as it may seem.
Women’s Work I
It is a feminist truism that women have always worked. Even the most “patriarchal” writers have not denied the significance of a woman’s work within the home. But in speaking of a woman’s work or a woman’s place we have to be very careful about making distinctions.
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