Written

A Providence neighborhood through a Statehouse window

Maybe there’s something to “systemic racism” in Rhode Island.

By Justin Katz | June 21, 2022 |

Shift your focus just a little bit from the standard narrative, and you can only shake your head at the conspicuous omission in Amy Russo’s Providence Journal article reporting that “racial disparities in homeownership are more severe than the national average” in Rhode Island: The report, released Thursday and authored by Brown School of Public Health…

Sabina Matos takes the oath of office.

What does Matos have against the First Amendment?

By Justin Katz | June 17, 2022 |

No sooner do I resolve to take the summer off from social media than the Lieutenant Governor of the State of Rhode Island, Sabina Matos, decides it’s politically advantageous to involve me in her primary campaign to retain her seat.  According to her press release: The Ocean State Current and the Center for Freedom and…

A water drop and ripples

What’s the supporter overlap between suicide-barriers and physician-assisted suicide?

By Justin Katz | June 16, 2022 |

This is probably a strange question to pose, but nonetheless, one wonders.  As the state government moves toward spending big money on suicide barriers that will inevitably change the aesthetic character of the bridges on which they’re installed, what is the belief system underlying our local culture?  Where do supporters for such things stand on,…

Jose Clemente Orozco, The Clowns of War Arguing in Hell

There is no reasoning with those who will to confiscate law-abiding citizens’ guns.

By Justin Katz | June 16, 2022 |

The idea of “reasonable” and “common sense” gun control laws is becoming an obvious sham.  Reasonable people acting according to common sense differentiate between policies in different states and balance facts such as how frequently a particular type of weapon has been used in crimes in the state where gun-control legislation is proposed and what…

A water drop and ripples

Yes, we should probably expect Democrats to have a hard time nationally.

By Justin Katz | June 15, 2022 |

The political commentary crew on CNN pretty uniformly believes Democrats will experience a “trouncing” come November.  Well, look.  That’s what happens when you install a senile old man through questionable means, selling him (to the extent you bother to make the case at all) as a reasonable centrist even though the people who make decisions…

Woonsocket and Cumberland map

Divisiveness and falsehood taint even feel-good student stories.

By Justin Katz | June 15, 2022 |

Stories like this, by Kavontae Smalls in the Atlanta Black Star, should be a more prominent part of local news, giving us all an opportunity to acknowledge and admire the achievements of those with whom we share a corner of the world.  Woonsocket sophomore Mariam Kaba has been awarded a $25,000 scholarship and given $1 million to…

A water drop and ripples

Social justice wokism is a means for elite self-righteousness.

By Justin Katz | June 14, 2022 |

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…

Theodore Gericault, Heroic Landscape with Fishermen

The smart set needs to ponder the value of historical limitations.

By Justin Katz | June 14, 2022 |

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…

A girl on her phone in a digital stream

We’re putting aside social media for the summer.

By Justin Katz | June 14, 2022 |

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…

A masked figure shushes silence

Redefined “tolerance” in Foster-Glocester is the marker of civil rights lost.

By Justin Katz | June 13, 2022 |

The totalitarian Communist language of administrators in the Foster-Glocester school district is reason for concern about the direction in which our country is headed: Several students at Ponaganset High School brought “anti-tolerant” flags to school following a celebration of Pride Month. In an emailed statement to The Journal, district leaders said there had been an…