Culture
To live in the shoreline suburbs of Rhode Island is periodically to encounter raw evidence that progressivism has gained its purchase here, at least in part, as a way for some of the most privileged people in human history to feel themselves even more superior while assuaging their own guilt by accusing those who are…
An episode of the High Noon podcast featuring Oren Cass brought to mind a point relevant to my break from social media. Cass is, in some respects, a contrarian in conservative circles, expressing some healthy skepticism against the free-market bent of the Right (a bent, to be clear, toward which I definitively incline). The assumptions of…
Sometimes the commentary on social media gives one the impression of an alternate reality. At the highest level, social media is a world of information, which means it can be entirely abstract. You can say or imagine anything, and the more you live apart from tangible reality, the less what you say and imagine has…
The issues of gun regulation and marijuana legalization have an interesting overlap, even as they head in opposite directions. To increase regulation of the former, advocates insist that we focus on the implements used for harm (the guns) and eschew — sometimes with great vehemence and insult to those who disagree — the notion that…
Harry Potter plays Weird Al Yankovic in what appears to be a quasi-fiction movie from a streaming service. I’m honestly not sure how I feel about this.
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…
When I returned to college in 1996, after two years of difficult, low-paying labor, I pledged a fraternity, and one of the brothers asked another pledge and me to remove a triangle rainbow sticker that somebody had slapped on the rear bumper of his truck. I had to ask what the sticker meant, and the…
Having just finished a graduate course in ethics, I found my mind keenly tuned to a question when Quillette editor Claire Lehmann raised it during a conversation with Jordan Peterson. Lehmann said she found herself offended, once, when asked in an ethics-related class whether she would smother her own baby to death so as to prevent…
For the growing “our elites are insane” file, WPRI gives this propagandistic headline to an AP article: “Early transgender identity tends to endure, study suggests.” See, the editor is implying, it’s not just a faddish thing that fades quickly. But think objectively about what precisely the study found: The research involved 317 youngsters who were 3…
As Anchor Rising readers know, last week a Providence Journal headline proclaimed, “RI’s record-shattering baby shortage could spell trouble for state’s economy.” This week, Lieutenant Governor Sabina Matos proclaimed her aspiration for the Ocean State to kill more: I’m confident RI can become a national leader for reproductive rights at a time when these rights are coming…
