Weaponized Classical Music

Commentary by , May 21, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. I’m Sorry, Dave, I’m Afraid I Can’t Let You Do That A while back, I warned that big Silicon Valley companies like Google depend on an implicit social contract in which we agree to let them have access to a bunch of our data, but with the […]

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Laurel and Yanny and Manny and Ayn

Feature Article by , May 19, 2018

Every once in a while a new puzzle or paradox sweeps the Internet. A while ago it was the optical illusion of a dress that was either blue and black or gold and white, depending on who you asked. Now it’s the auditory illusion of Laurel Versus Yanny. This is a sound clip that originated […]

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The Enlightenment Is Not the Enemy

Feature Article by , May 17, 2018

Jonah Goldberg has a new book out defending the “liberal”—i.e., pro-freedom—legacy of the Enlightenment, the philosophical awakening of the 18th Century. Such a defense is certainly needed in light of the Enlightenment’s wholesale rejection by today’s mainstream intellectuals. Yet this has required many others on the right to come to terms with their views of […]

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America’s Carnival Barker

Feature Article by , May 16, 2018

Tom Wolfe died yesterday at age 88, after a long and colorful career as America’s carnival barker. I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense. The carnival barker has a certain reputation for brazen dishonesty in overselling his product. (We’ll get to that in a moment.) But he is also our enthusiastic guide to a […]

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A Giant Effigy of Marx

Feature Article by , May 15, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. Jaw-Jaw Is Better Than War-War I recently responded to a claim, reflecting the conventional wisdom of the Trump-era right, that “ideas and persuasion are insufficient” for the pitched culture war we are currently in. This is often expressed in the conviction that scribblers like me are useless […]

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The Art of Balkanization

Feature Article by , May 11, 2018

I argued a while back that the increasingly dominant character of the art championed by our cultural elites is didacticism: “an absence of substantial or profound artistic content, compensated for by loud, didactic political messaging. We know what we’re supposed to feel, whether or not the work of art actually makes us feel it.” By […]

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Workingmen and Reformers

Commentary by , May 10, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. Fighting the Last Election The Republican Party just got through a difficult party primary day in which there were several local candidates who seemed like they might win by adopting a Trumpian style, but who had severe weaknesses as general election candidates. The chief of these was […]

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The Cold War with Iran Is Back

Feature Article by , May 9, 2018

The Cold War with Iran is back. I don’t say this as a criticism of President Trump’s decision to cancel the Iran deal. That decision did not restart the conflict. Iran’s Cold War against the US never stopped. This decision just recognizes that fact and gets America back in to fight our side of it. […]

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The Virtual Civil War

Feature Article by , May 8, 2018

Donald Trump has a unique ability to get people on the right to fight with each other. The latest internecine battle is an article by a pseudonymous writer, “John Ericsson,” in The Federalist, arguing that we should all get behind Donald Trump in order to fight the Politically Correct left—followed by a long, impassioned response […]

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Escape from Utopia

Commentary by , May 3, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today Here is your latest update, for subscribers only, recommending five stories that are worth catching. 1. “We’ve Always Known They Were Lying” So it turns out that Iran was lying the whole time when it made a deal with the Obama administration about its nuclear weapons program. I […]

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