The Old Republic
Those Were the Days
Things I miss:
Boys who carried paper routes and mowed lawns.
Women and girls in actual dresses.
Strange Words for Strange Days
Charity.
Old version: Open-handedness toward our neighbour in need.
New version: Getting the government to spend other people’s money on politically favoured groups, at home and abroad.
Devil’s Brew in Dixie
The Dutch Fork of South Carolina
Our small but proud State can’t seem to stay out of the political spotlight. We had barely recovered from the exposure of our present Governor’s exotic extra-marital affair when we made the headlines again as a result of the surprising outcome of the Republican primary for the next governor.
Call Me Simple . . . (2)
But I don’t understand:
How all those “experts” who are always mouthing off in the media and who are not really experts manage to get on the air.
Why people can’t tell the difference between speculation and investment.
Call Me Simple . . .
But I don’t understand:
Why the government spends billions on welfare but people keep saying hunger is a big problem.
Why the government spends billions on education and the population gets dumber and dumber.
The Disgrace of Disgrace
This film has won a major prize and is being given the big hype by all the trendy thinkers as a profound look at the “new South Africa.” That it may be, though not in the way they mean. Disgrace is one of the vilest movies ever produced for normal viewing, and I cannot recommend it for anyone. Even though I fast-forwarded through much of it, I admit it haunts me like a bad dream—a hellish tour of Western decadence.
Maxims for American Intellectuals
(good for putting down right-wing bigots at cocktail parties or in the classroom)
Taking off your shoes at the airport is patriotic and makes you safer.
If college athletes fail academically it is obviously society’s fault.
Filmlog: Laila’s Birthday and The Lemon Tree
I hold with Washington and Jefferson—it is dangerous folly for our government to get involved in conflicts among different bunches of foreigners. But that wisdom was long ago trashed by our rulers, who imagine themselves Masters of the Universe of Global Democracy, and their court intellectuals, who imagine themselves to be prophets when they are only second-string and rather comic soothsayers.
On Being America’s Red-Headed Stepchild
Are you puzzled and irritated by the viciousness and falsity of most of what is being published these days about the South and Southern history? The beginning of all wisdom on this subject is to know that in American public discourse and so-called scholarship there is usually no effort to understand the South, like any other human phenomenon, as it is. Rather the South is raw material in a morality play about American, that is, about Northern righteousness.
Looking for the Hen’s Tooth
An unindicted Illinois governor.
A teenager not talking on a cell phone.
