Culture
I’ve written, periodically, about my belief that debt is the new method of indentured servitude. If we can get young adults to enter the working world with hundreds of thousands of dollars in education loans, some additional thousands in credit card debt (incurred on the expectation of profitable labor after graduation), with car loans a…
Because he italicized it on a list of one-liners, I couldn’t help but catch the following from Providence Journal columnist Bob Kerr: The damage Wal-Mart has done to the social fabric, to the downtown connections and sense of community, is incalculable. Blaming WalMart for the deterioration of downtowns is merely an indication of the human…
A line from Mary Eberstadt’s recent summary of sociological research about pornography includes this telling observation: Several experts have also noted one more interesting phenomenon that most people who have ever written on this thankless subject will verify: Telling the truth about pornography is practically guaranteed to elicit malice and venom unique in their potency…
The relevance of education came up in an interesting conversation that National Review’s Jay Nordlinger had with a Tunisian immigrant in Texas: The driver was recently back in Tunisia. And a curious incident occurred, in the town. A horse reared up and injured somebody (not badly). The owner subdued the horse as quickly as he…
Hadley Arkes examines the Supreme Court case Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, which is addressing the question of whether the Hastings Law School of the University of California in San Francisco can refuse to recognize a student group for Christians that excludes anybody with “unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle.” The…
One hears, from time to time, that abstinence only sex education has been proven to be a failure. Not only is the proof arguably incorrect, but the entire premise misses the mark. Abstinence education hardly enjoyed meager implementation, let alone the pervasive reinforcement that would be necessary for society-wide effect. But I do wonder what…
A recent column by John Derbyshire was more entertaining than usual. I say that, in part, because I greatly sympathize with his suspicion of the medical arts — although I’ve never calculated out the risks entailed with various tests as compared with the risk of not taking them. But what’s really lodged in my imagination…
Bradley Watson’s essay, “Darwin’s Constitution,” is worth reading in its entirety (subscription required), but this paragraph points toward the problem with the notion that society is evolving in a progressive direction: Dewey’s elucidation of the new modes of social inquiry drew upon the thought of a number of Social Darwinist and pragmatist thinkers, including William…
The past week left me feeling like a man trapped in anachronism. My work environment, which is rarely more hospitable than “endurable,” seemed transported to a time when “servitude” was a more accurate description than “employment.” Physically, it took a week for doctors to find the correct eye drops to battle a progressive eye infection…
Reading the Sunday ProJo, I noticed the weird picture of a normal looking business-type guy smiling alongside a couple others dressed in suits, but with dinosaur heads. The picture accompanied a piece explaining how the London theatre crowd was aghast that American audiences just didn’t get the London hit play Enron. Basically, according to the…