Ron Paul certainly has some Internet buzz going, but whenever he does surprisingly well in some straw poll or other, the talking heads of received political wisdom attribute it to dedicated spammers in the Paul campaign. But whatever you say about the capacity of spam, it does not raise money. In politics, you have to …
Important Correction
A few days ago I ran this photo below. And as much as I would like to run the “false but true” defense that Dan Rather has wielded so effectively in the past, it appears that the photo is actually from a 1994 Dutch indie film entitled The Stone. The actress in the photo is …
NSA in The New York Times Magazine
We got a nice note from Molly Worthen, who wrote an article on NSA for The New York Times Magazine. That article is available here. In her note she comments, fairly enough, that the article is critical in places, but that she is hopeful that the article does indicate her interest in and admiration for …
Unappreciated Heroism
“It was in Africa that I first discovered that bourgeois virtues are not only desirable but often heroic” (Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It, p. 25).
A Real Clash Shaping Up
“Without question, Jesus and Muhammad are the two most influential persons who ever lived. Today we can see the influence in the two largest religions in the world: Christianity with more than two billion followers, and Islam with 1.3 billion” (Mark Gabriel, Jesus and Muhammad, p. vii).
The Wrong Units of Measurement
“It is only the sentimentalist who imagines that the profundity of a person’s response to tragedy is proportional to the length, volume, or shrillness of his lamentation” (Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It, p. 20).
Contempt for the Poor
“But there is little doubt that an oppositional attitude toward traditional social rules is what wins the modern intellectual his spurs, in the eyes of other intellectuals. And the prestige that intellectuals confer upon antinomianism soon communicates itself to nonintellectuals. What is good for the bohemian sooner or later becomes good for the unskilled worker, …
Ahmadinejad and Terrorism
Yesterday I saw a talking head on television waxing indignant over Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York. One of the things he was angry about was the fact this man, a terrorist, engaged in killing American soldiers, was able to come over here and say his bit. We have to be careful not to let the …
Civilians Fair Game
“Prophet Muhammad was once asked if it was OK to kill women and children of those who were polytheistic . . . or infidels. He said, ‘I consider them as of their parents.’ In other words, if the parents were infidels, then it was permissible to kill their children” (Mark Gabriel, Islam and Terrorism, p. …
When Conscience Cannot be Denied
“It is a little like watching the Texas Chainsaw Massacre over and over again and watching the hippies drawn inexorably to their doom in the uncanny house . . . that has become not a place of refuge, but of slaughter instead. That house is our culture. We are all being led into that house …