Ripple
I’m as keen to lament the deterioration of our broader community as anybody else, but reactions to a recent cell phone video taken in the New York City subway seem to me to overstate the inaction of the bystanders. In summary, a guy who is obviously disturbed walks through the subway car shouting. He sits…
Reviewing the details of school shootings, the other day for an online conversation, I was struck by how clearly banning a particular style of gun or access-related regulations will not solve the problem. They may or may not be justified on their merits, but to treat such policies as if they are obvious fixes is…
The problem is that they’re not founded in reason, but emotion. I’m not interested in developing solutions to our problems through the method of emoting alongside others. Emotion supplies motivation; it is not the process for finding answers. Yet, without fail, when progressives (or “moderates,” for that matter) articulate their emotions in the guise of…
You don’t have to pay very much attention to political discourse in the United States to know that “mass shooting” has a very particular definition. When Americans hear the phrase, they think of one or more psychotic gunmen killing people indiscriminately as an expression of alienation. It feels deliberate, therefore, that the mainstream media appears…
The recently released video promoting Republican Ashley Kalus’s campaign for governor provides reason to think she’s got some real opportunities and exposes some of the risks her campaign faces: On the risk side, her references to bringing policies from specific other states is the sort of thing that rubs provincial Rhode Islanders the wrong…
When Bill Felkner introduced me to Republican state Senator Frank Maher on the back steps of the State House, I was still new enough to politics-in-the-flesh to think he was a representative sample of elected officials. “He’s one of the good guys,” Bill told me, and he was right. On another occasion, not long after,…
Has it ever happened in history that a country’s government has so aggressively opposed a domestic industry so vital to the economy and national security? It’s like an autoimmune disorder. Nancy Pelosi: We cannot “use [high gas prices] as an excuse” to produce more American energy pic.twitter.com/txlUvEYVmS — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 31, 2022
I’m glad to have learned about the Abernathy Boys’ cross-country adventures a century ago, but I do wonder. Sure, the 10- and 6-year-olds’ adventures do echo across the decades as something lost. And yet… their story was unique even then, and life has become less dangerous for children, which is a good thing. On the…
We’re not supposed to eat meat on Fridays during Lent. However, yesterday was the Solemnity of the Annunciation, which means the rule of abstaining from meat was suspended for the day. Whether Biden knew of the suspension, we cannot know. Even if he didn’t, this would have been a small transgression (especially compared with…
It’s interesting how topics bubble up in the constant flow of information in which we swim, these days. Yesterday, I came across Martha Rosenberg’s interview with women’s health advocate Mike Gaskins, whose research has investigated the science and politics with which the birth-control pill became a cultural mainstay: Several years ago, I heard a lecture…