A feature article in a May 2017 issue of The Economist opens its discussion of the Six Day War with a clever play on the Genesis narrative: In the beginning they destroyed Egypt’s air force on the ground and knocked out the planes of Jordan, Iraq and Syria. That was Monday. Then they broke Egypt’s massive defences […]
One of the main points Du Bois is developing throughout his book is that, to quote him directly, “the defining problem of the 20th century [was] the color line.” He continues to develop this point in chapter two, which he begins this way: The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the […]
There is a movement afoot, particularly within black evangelical circles, to extol, if not exalt, social justice as the raison d’etre, that is, the most important reason and purpose, of the church today. I say ‘particularly’ because the aforementioned movement is not restricted only to the realm of black evangelicalism. The truth is there are also certain […]
“Not again.” That was my first thought when Eugene Peterson’s comments on gay marriage came out. Regardless of the retraction, I knew the next few days would be ugly online. Various think-pieces (good and bad) would come, as would the tweets, the aggressive partisans, and the aggrieved bystanders in the middle, wringing their hands. I […]
Over the past generation, members of the college-educated class have become amazingly good at making sure their children retain their privileged status. They have also become devastatingly good at making sure the children of other classes have limited chances to join their ranks. How they’ve managed to do the first task — giving their own […]
In her much-read New York Times column “Donald Skunks the Democrats,” Maureen Dowd skates quite close to the truth before swerving off into mendacious Timesland fantasy. Writing in the aftermath of Jon Ossoff’s embarrassing defeat by Karen Handel in Georgia, Dowd begins by acknowledging the obvious: You know who is really sick and tired of Donald Trump […]
Suppose it’s true. Suppose that, at the end of the day, people of African descent have lower IQs on average than do other groups of humans, and that this gap is caused, at least in part, by genetic differences. Of late, since Charles Murray was all but physically assaulted when he tried to speak at […]
For months, Democrats have resisted the notion that they were the problem. Despite a series of historic losses resulting in the party’s worst position in nearly a century, Democrats convinced themselves that their philosophy was shared by a majority of the country. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, after all. The left dominates popular culture. […]
‘‘Liberal’’ has long been a dirty word to the American political right. It may be shortened, in the parlance of the Limbaugh Belt, to ‘‘libs,’’ or expanded to the offensive portmanteau ‘‘libtards.’’ But its target is always clear. For the people who use these epithets, liberals are, basically, everyone who leans to the left: big-spending […]
The Queen appears to hold to the common belief that the American revolution was justified. This belief has prevailed, almost unquestioned, among many, if not most, Americans. The extreme view casts the American Revolutionary War as a simple affair in which the forces of liberty stood against those of tyranny. But is the proper moral analysis […]
