Culture

Broken plates

It’s well past time for the domestic abuse narrative to change.

By Justin Katz | November 23, 2021 |

Reacting to Joe Biden’s comments on the Waukesha Christmas parade massacre, Brown University political science professor Wendy Schiller linked the incident to domestic violence: Here’s an idea. Take domestic violence more seriously at every level of government. Biden should know as he authored the original Violence Against Women Act. Although the mainstream narrative doesn’t make…

A water drop and ripples

This may be the lyric that marks the turning of the tide.

By Justin Katz | November 20, 2021 |

“Am I the only one who quit singing along, Every time they play a Springsteen song.”     Hat tip Lara Logan.

A water drop and ripples

An unsurprising finding that social media is bad for your mental health.

By Justin Katz | November 18, 2021 |

Cal Newport describes an interesting natural experiment created by the way Facebook rolled out from one campus to the next: The authors of this paper connect a dataset containing the dates when Facebook was introduced to 775 different colleges with answers from seventeen consecutive waves of the National College Health Assessment (NCHA), a comprehensive and longstanding…

A water drop and ripples

One state’s child pornography is another state’s mental health aid.

By Justin Katz | November 18, 2021 |

In South Carolina, school districts and now the governor have taken parental concerns about explicit material in school libraries, as Matt McGregor reports for The Epoch Times: “It has come to my attention that public schools in South Carolina may be providing students with access—whether in school libraries, electronic databases, or both—to completely inappropriate books and…

A chart of Native American life expectancy vs. the average

Encouraging fixation on historical harms isn’t helping the disadvantaged.

By Justin Katz | November 18, 2021 |

At the risk of expressing a forbidden opinion, this is not a healthy perspective: Even if Indigenous people spend Thanksgiving with family and festivities, [Tomaquag Museum executive director Lorén Spears] said, “They still know that this isn’t always a happy time for us because it reminds us of all the trauma and loss that our…

Kansas anti-mandate protesters

Historical analogies for the hated other.

By Justin Katz | November 17, 2021 |

If history repeated with a twist, would you notice?  I’ve wondered that often, over the years, and have marveled how difficult it seems for people to spot trends and recognize analogies. A recent example came courtesy of Paul Dion when he commented, “Absolutely disgusting,” while sharing a tweet by “they/them” California techy Chad Loder: In…

A water drop and ripples

Courts will weigh in on whether schools can lie to parents about helping students change their identities.

By Justin Katz | November 17, 2021 |

Transgenderism in schools is one of those strange issues that is simply so odd many people will just not process it, to the point of denial, while others will insist on seeing it as completely normal advancement in human interactions, but that is going to determine answers to profound questions, whether we acknowledge the issue…

A water drop and ripples

Vermont advances the sexualization of children.

By Justin Katz | November 15, 2021 |

If you’re wondering why the topic of free condoms in schools is appearing in headlines and social media conversations today, it might be because “Vermont just became the first state in the nation to give access to free condoms in grades 7-12,” as Hank Berrien reports for the Daily Wire. It’s actually a bit more extreme…

A fading man on train tracks

They want to inherit victim status more than they want to inherit liberty.

By Justin Katz | November 12, 2021 |

If you’ve followed political punditry much over the past couple decades, you know how significant it is that Matthew Yglesias and Andrew Sullivan are both questioning the conclusion drawn from a recent Center for American Progress survey: A recent nationally representative survey conducted by the Center for American Progress found that LGBTQI+ members of Generation…

Heroes of Liberty figurines

In education, fight fire with… constructive, positive action.

By Justin Katz | November 12, 2021 |

While this view is not shared by all of my compatriots on the right, particularly those inclined to engage in political, social, and cultural battles, I’m a firm believer that in this arena, you cannot fight fire with fire.  Consider the aphorism that one should never wrestle with pigs, because one only gets dirty and…