The Spies Who Came Back to the Cold

Commentary by , June 2, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. The Right to Try The best part of the Trump administration, underneath the overhanging existential dread, is the push for deregulation. A lot of this has been done through executive action, which is of limited value because it can be undone by the next president (something Barack […]

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“Roseanne” and Donald

Feature Article by , May 31, 2018

Roseanne Barr has been fired, causing ABC to cancel the rebooted version of her self-named TV show, “Roseanne,” because of a tweet with arguably racist implications. The whole debacle is a microcosm of the way we live now, and in ways that are not comforting for either side. Sure, it’s a warning about the hair […]

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Is Google Landru?

Feature Article by , May 30, 2018

Last week, I wrote about how those of us on the right can be Star Trek fans despite its supposedly “Progressive” politics. Partly, this is because good art is about a lot more than a didactic political message. But it also struck me how much of the message of Star Trek is consistent with the […]

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Generic Democratic Candidate

Commentary by , May 28, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. The Gods of the Copybook Headings In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: […]

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Jim Kirk Was Many Things, But He Was Never a Social Justice Warrior

Feature Article by , May 25, 2018

It has become commonplace these days to lament that we don’t have a common culture anymore—a repertoire of art that we can all enjoy regardless of our political loyalties. Well, maybe it’s because we have a lot of people trying to mark off parts of the culture as their tribal territory, off limits to partisan […]

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Art for Whose Sake?

Feature Article by , May 23, 2018

I’ve been tracking the growing PC didacticism of contemporary culture and some of its more extravagant recent manifestations. (That was about a music video whose status as PC propaganda has been cemented by the narrow restrictions placed on how others can reference it or comment on it.) What strikes me the most is how mainstream […]

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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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