Culture

A water drop and ripples

Fathers and honesty are powerful forces.

By Justin Katz | October 26, 2021 |

This is such a great story, out of Louisiana: These guys for President. All of them. pic.twitter.com/xfdLgI7Ayp — Heath Mayo (@HeathMayo) October 23, 2021 A big part of what makes it powerful is the simple, plain honesty.  Men simply have a way of being that can affect an atmosphere positively, especially if they’ve been conditioned…

A water drop and ripples

Christian movies fully engage the politics of the culture war.

By Justin Katz | October 25, 2021 |

I’ve got to admit this trailer got me amped to see the movie, even though I had no idea this series was up to its fourth movie.

A husky leans out of a car

Meals and Dogs

By John Loughlin | October 23, 2021 |

Meghan Grady discusses Meals on Wheels, and Eric Letendre gives tips on dog training.

A water drop and ripples

This ought to be the dominant rule on teaching “white privilege.”

By Justin Katz | October 22, 2021 |

We need to order some of this attitude from across the Pond: The British government has instructed schools not to “teach contested theories and opinions as fact,” including contested views about so-called “white privilege.” The government on Thursday published its response to a report from the UK Parliament’s Education Select Committee, which said that the…

A water drop and ripples

We have to stop taking offense at the drop of a feather.

By Justin Katz | October 22, 2021 |

Here’s the key paragraph in this Epoch Times article about a California teacher who’s been put on leave after wearing a paper headdress and dancing in a (let’s say) indigenous fashion to drive home a math lesson: “It is damaging and disheartening to see Native American and indigenous culture represented in such a trite and…

Robin Williams charts poetry in Dead Poets Society

The woke measure everything with the wobbly ruler by which they judged poetry (and killed it).

By Justin Katz | October 22, 2021 |

Since human beings are wired to measure and compare, we are susceptible demands to judge things of less-overt merit by something other than merit that is measurable, like the skin color of the participants. 

Apartment buildings

The evicted mother’s story reveals much more that our society needs work on.

By Justin Katz | October 21, 2021 |

One difficulty with assessing sympathetic stories associated with public policy debates (and the reason advocates actively seek and promote them) is that they short circuit rational discussion about tradeoffs.  The position of seeming to lack sympathy is so uncomfortable that the public debate leaves important details unraised and, typically, the villain is assigned to be…

A water drop and ripples

We need to restore the sense of going out for adventure.

By Justin Katz | October 21, 2021 |

While he goes a bit far in framing ’80s dance parties as a path to God, Mark Judge makes a great point, here: Going out was a long ride uninterrupted by texts, which didn’t exist, or phone calls, because phone booths were hard to find. The experience formed a kind of meditation. The professional world…

A water drop and ripples

Remember when it was the height of bigotry to worry about biological men in women’s private spaces?

By Justin Katz | October 20, 2021 |

The most infamous and egregious case, of course, is the reported rape by a boy in a skirt of a 15-year-old girl in the girls’ bathroom in a Loudon County, Virginia, school.  The school department lied about the case and tried to bury it, and the case wouldn’t be nearly as infamous if the news…

The Carmagnole (Dance Around the Guillotine) by Kathe Kollwitz

URI is helping a powerful celebrity destroy the life of one of its students.

By Justin Katz | October 19, 2021 |

It’s never an easy call to side with people on principled grounds when you vehemently disagree with something mind-blowingly stupid and offensive they’ve done or said, especially in an environment prone to witch hunts and cancellations.  But that’s the sort of thing principled people have to do in a free society. So, I have no…