'Free Speech' Means Just That by John Yoo & James C. Phillips

'Free Speech' Means Just That by John Yoo & James C. Phillips
Editor’s Note: The following is the seventh in a series of articles in which Mr. Yoo and Mr. Phillips lay out a course of constitutional restoration, pointing out areas where the Supreme Court has driven the Constitution off its rails and the ways the current Court can put it back on track. The first entry is available here, the second here, the third here, the fourth here, the fifth here, and the sixth here.

The imperialistic expansion of free speech would not just surprise most 21st-century Americans; it would also make little sense to the 18th-century Americans who ratified the First Amendment. They would find it astounding that the courts have not just read speech to include many forms of conduct, but also have failed to establish any objective test for what constitutes speech. The Supreme Court appears to apply the perpetually malleable standard that emerged when it has sought to identify obscenity: It knows it when it sees it.

Interesting argument that "Free Speech" as guaranteed in the 1st Amendment has been interpreted too broadly and that is detrimental to preserving actual free speech. 

Going To Yale Makes Women Rich, But Only If They Marry—And Other Studies Women Should See by Lyman Stone

Going To Yale Makes Women Rich, But Only If They Marry—And Other Studies Women Should See

But for women, attending a highly selective school has massive effects. A young woman admitted to both UK and Yale faces a resounding choice about her future life. If she chooses Yale, odds are that her annual income when she is 40 will be about 40-70 percent more. However, her odds of ever getting married are about 25 percentage points, or about one third, lower. Crucially, her odds of having a higher income rise only if she gets married! 

Fascinating take on a piece of conventional wisdom that says it doesn't matter what college you go to. Apparently it does... for women!

The Liberal Arts Weren’t Murdered — They Committed Suicide by Victor Davis Hanson

The Liberal Arts Weren’t Murdered — They Committed Suicide by Victor Davis Hanson

In other words, what is being jettisoned is likely not just history as we once understood it but rather de facto poorly taught “-studies” courses — which sadly become snapshots of particular (and often small) eras of history — designed to offer enough historical proof of preconceived theories about contemporary modern society. The students then are assumed by the course’s end to be outraged, persuaded, galvanized, and shocked in politically acceptable ways. Usually they are just bored, as supposedly with-it professors endlessly regurgitate the esoterica picked up in graduate schools.

When the vaunted VDH speaks, I listen. He nails it on how the PC universities have killed the humanities by boring the students to death with the endless diatribes as discovered through a monotonous Race, Class, Gender lens.

Do We Need Our Country Anymore? by Larry P. Arnn

Do We Need Our Country Anymore? by Larry P. Arnn

As we reach the end of this turbulent year, the uproar of the hour is against the nation-state, and not for the first time. “World leaders” are now accustomed to call for the subordination of the nation to the good of the globe. This call is amplified by the media and intellectual elites, who march in lockstep. If the call is right, the peoples of the world will enter a new age of global peace, prosperity, and cooperation. If it is wrong, the free nations of the world will lose the remnants of democratic accountability that have kept them free.

Always love hearing from Hillsdale's president Arnn.

Yes, Evangelical ‘Abstinence Culture’ Is A Bust, But The Answer Isn’t A Sexual Free-For-All by Matthew Cochran

Yes, Evangelical ‘Abstinence Culture’ Is A Bust, But The Answer Isn’t A Sexual Free-For-All

Christians need a third path—something that actually encourages marriage instead of choosing between fornication or celibacy. The church needs to recover the virtue of chastity.

Trying to advocate for abstinence while Christians push back marriage later and later in the pursuit of career goals is a recipe for failure. The Church needs to recognize that she has swallowed a lie.

An End to Racial Preferences at Last? by John Yoo & James C. Phillips

An End to Racial Preferences at Last? by John Yoo & James C. Phillips
Editor’s Note: The following is the sixth in a series of articles in which Mr. Yoo and Mr. Phillips lay out a course of constitutional restoration, pointing out areas where the Supreme Court has driven the Constitution off its rails and the ways the current Court can put it back on track. The first entry is available here, the second here, the third here, the fourth here, and the fifth here.

Affirmative action is unconstitutional. Full stop. That doesn’t mean that legislatures cannot craft solutions that will have the result of helping minority students succeed or making business more competitive; it just means those solutions cannot be based on race. Nothing in the Constitution, for example, prohibits institutions from seeking diversity based on poverty or skills. It just cannot use race. Even if the Court must use its power of judicial review to override the considered judgment of the elected branches of government, this is what the Supreme Court’s power is for: to refuse to carry into effect the commands of the other branches that violate the higher law of the Constitution. That is not activism; it is constitutional fidelity.

Perhaps it is time to end the systematic racism that is affirmative action.

In Defense of Capitalism By Matthew Summers

In Defense of Capitalism By Matthew Summers

But feelings such as these should not overwhelm our sober observation that there are no alternatives to sound economic principles such as the profit motive, rational self-interest, and the divisions of labor. Sound economic principles must be defended and explained, and the reader should understand that virtually no improvement is possible on these ideas. But fortunately, the ideas outlined and defended above do not preclude

Christian charity, as Dr. Stanciu suggests. In fact, charity serves a vital purpose in any economy. Something that Dr. Stanciu neglected to observe is that charitable donations in America increase yearly, and last year they surpassed a staggering $400 billion dollars.[5] If this is not evidence of the compatibility of Christian charity and capitalism, I don’t know what is.

Fascinating rebuttal to an earlier piece.

Religion and the New Supreme Court by John Yoo and James C. Phillips

Religion and the New Supreme Court by John Yoo and James C. Phillips
Editor’s Note: The following is the fifth in a series of articles in which Mr. Yoo and Mr. Phillips will lay out a course of constitutional restoration, pointing out areas where the Supreme Court has driven the Constitution off its rails and the ways the current Court can put it back on track. The first entry is available here, the second here, the third here, and the fourth here.

In short, to the extent the establishment clause is viewed as hostile to religion and the free-exercise clause as solicitous of religion, the First Amendment is at war with itself. And that makes little sense historically or logically.

Brilliant addition to a Constitutional series on restoring the revered document to its original meaning. 

The Second Amendment Has Always Been An Individual Right by David Harsanyi

The Second Amendment Has Always Been An Individual Right by David Harsanyi

The notion of individual ownership of firearms was so unmistakable and so omnipresent in colonial days—and beyond—that Americans saw no more need to debate its existence than they did the right to drink water or breathe the air.

It's nice to have a bit of common sense truth spelled out so clearly.

The enduring miracle of the American Constitution by Charles Krauthammer

The enduring miracle of the American Constitution by Charles Krauthammer

Many things are miraculous about the U.S. Constitution. The first is that, somehow, on this edge of the civilized world two and a half centuries ago, there could have been a collection of such political geniuses as to have actually written it.
The second miracle is the substance of it — the way that the founders, drawing from Locke and Montesquieu and the Greeks, created an extraordinary political apparatus that to this day still works and that has worked with incredible success for nearly a quarter of a millennium.

Our beloved Krauthammer will be sorely missed for exactly this kind of wisdom and insight.

The Second(-Class) Amendment by John Yoo & James C. Phillips

The Second(-Class) Amendment by John Yoo & James C. Phillips
Editor’s Note: The following is the fourth in a series of articles in which Mr. Yoo and Mr. Phillips will lay out a course of constitutional restoration, pointing out areas where the Supreme Court has driven the Constitution off its rails and the ways the current Court can put it back on track. The first entry is available here, the second here, and the third here.

But just as we argued earlier with privacy, the true constitutional source for a right to bear arms comes through the 14th Amendment’s privileges and immunities clause. The radical Republicans believed that one of slavery’s great sins was its deprivation of the basic natural rights of blacks: to think and speak for themselves, to keep the fruits of their labors, to participate in political life as full citizens, and to defend their lives and property, just as any other human being could. In drafting the privileges and immunities clause, Reconstruction congressmen argued that it would override the South’s laws that had prohibited blacks from bearing arms and defending themselves. Rather than give in to the liberal enterprise of inventing rights from whole cloth, the new Roberts Court could more faithfully ground the right to bear arms by honoring the understandings of the Republicans who freed the slaves and fought to enshrine their equal rights in the Constitution.

Very interesting argument from the 14th Amendment "privileges and immunities" clause that would tie pre-existing natural rights to Constitutionally guaranteed rights.

The New Supreme Court and Privacy Jurisprudence by John Yoo & James C. Phillips

The New Supreme Court and Privacy Jurisprudence by John Yoo & James C. Phillips
Editor’s Note: The following is the third in a series of articles in which Mr. Yoo and Mr. Phillips will lay out a course of constitutional restoration, pointing out areas where the Supreme Court has driven the Constitution off its rails and the ways the current Court can put it back on track. The first entry is available here, the second here.

For the last half century, the Left has turned to the Supreme Court to win what it could not in the normal political process. The Court has embedded the sexual revolution into the Constitution and “found” new progressive rights for privacy and dignity, as well as protections against animus, in a document that mentions none of the above. Conservatives should not seek to overturn Roe because they are obsessed with abortion; they should demand its reversal because it represents a politicization of the Supreme Court and an abuse of the Constitution to short-circuit democracy in the service of the latest left-wing ideals of the day.

Yoo and Phillips argue that the court should get out of the way of defining nebulous rights and let the people have their say in their local bodies.

Birthright Citizenship and Dual Citizenship: Harbingers of Administrative Tyranny by Edward J. Erler

Birthright Citizenship and Dual Citizenship: Harbingers of Administrative Tyranny by Edward J. Erler

Thus there are two components to American citizenship: birth or naturalization in the U.S. and being subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. We have somehow come today to believe that anyone born within the geographical limits of the U.S. is automatically subject to its jurisdiction. But this renders the jurisdiction clause utterly superfluous and without force.

Very interesting take on the "birth-right citizenship" debate.

With Kavanaugh, the Court Should Tame the Administrative State by John Yoo & James C.Phillips

With Kavanaugh, the Court Should Tame the Administrative State by John Yoo & James C.Phillips
Editor’s Note: The following is the second in a series of articles in which Mr. Yoo and Mr. Phillips will lay out a course of constitutional restoration, pointing out areas where the Supreme Court has driven the Constitution off its rails and the ways the current Court can put it back on track. The first entry is available here.

Before his confirmation, Kavanaugh had no clear views on privacy, race, or sexuality, the great constitutional holy of holies of the Left. Instead, his real threat to modern liberalism came from his hostility to the progressive vision of technocratic government run by insulated bureaucrats and protected by deferential judges.

It seems that Kamanaugh may be a voice in returning the Administrative State to Constitutional sanity. We'll see...

A Clash of Judicial Visions by John Yoo & James C. Phillips

A Clash of Judicial Visions by John Yoo & James C. Phillips
Editor’s Note: The following is the first in a series of articles in which Mr. Yoo and Mr. Phillips will lay out a course of constitutional restoration, pointing out areas where the Supreme Court has driven the Constitution off its rails and the ways the current Court can put it back on track.

From a constitutional perspective, originalism is clearly superior to the common-law approach of judges who enact their own policy preferences like a legislator. First, originalism is the only legitimate way for a Supreme Court justice to approach the job.

I'm excited about this series of articles by well-respected law professors. They so clearly lays out what is at stake. 

Seattle Under Siege by Christopher F. Rufo

Seattle Under Siege by Christopher F. Rufo

The best way to prevent homelessness isn’t to build new apartment complexes or pass new tax levies but to rebuild the family, community, and social bonds that once held communities together. As Richard McAdams, a recovered addict and current outreach worker for the Union Gospel Mission, told me: “There are 6,000 people on the streets in Seattle. I know 3,000 of them by name and know their stories. It’s not a resource issue in this city, it’s a relational issue. The biggest problem is broken relationships.”

Excellent look at the forces arrayed against homelessness and the reasons for their absolute failure.

Harkness Cautions: You Need A Sage On A Stage by Joshua Gibbs

Harkness Cautions: You Need A Sage On A Stage by Joshua Gibbs

A good teacher is not trying to inspire a lifelong spirit of inquiry. A good teacher is revealing Truth, and helping students to settle finally on the Truth. If a teacher is opening minds, he ought to be closing them on the life of God and morality and virtue, not leaving them endlessly dangling like broken jaws. The good teacher does not merely help students investigate the meaning of virtue, he commands them to be virtuous, explains virtue with clarity, and models virtue for them in his texts and his own life.

I could not love this iconoclast's ideas more. He makes me catch my breath.

At Sixteen, It Is Very Hard To Pray by Joshua Gibbs

At Sixteen, It Is Very Hard To Pray

These rather banal, mundane desires more or less gutted my desire to pray when I was younger. Pray? For what? Prayer was far more ceremonial than anything. Prayer was how church started, how assemblies at school started, how meals started. Prayer was nothing more than a little bell you rang for ten seconds that let everyone know to be quiet. And just like you don’t need practice to ring a little bell, neither do you need practice to pray. It’s whatever comes out of your mouth. You don’t practice it. You don’t prepare for it. You don’t remember what you said ten minutes later. 

Once again, Joshua Gibbs nails the modern ethos...

We’re Not on the Brink of Civil War. Here’s Why. by Jay Cost

We’re Not on the Brink of Civil War. Here’s Why. by Jay Cost

Here, Hamilton makes a compelling case that if groups of people recognize that they can make money from interacting with one another, they will come together. Their interests will ultimately be “blended and interwoven,” even if they have different religions, regional dialects, or professions.

His argument is that as long as we need each other to have a functioning economy, civil war will not be an option. We'll see...

Is the Aeneid a Celebration of Empire—or a Critique? by Daniel Mendelsohn

Is the Aeneid a Celebration of Empire—or a Critique? by Daniel Mendelsohn

[T]he difficulties we have with Aeneas and his epic cease to be difficulties once you think of him not as a hero but as a type we’re all too familiar with: a survivor, a person so fractured by the horrors of the past that he can hold himself together only by an unnatural effort of will, someone who has so little of his history left that the only thing that gets him through the present is a numbed sense of duty to a barely discernible future that can justify every kind of deprivation. It would be hard to think of a more modern figure.

Mendelsohn rethinks the Aeneid to finally see Aeneas as far more modern than we might otherwise think and therefore far more relevant

Everyone Lost at the Ford-Kavanaugh Hearings By Andrew Sullivan

Everyone Lost at the Ford-Kavanaugh Hearings By Andrew Sullivan

And it is the distinguishing mark of specifically totalitarian societies that this safety is eradicated altogether by design. There, the private is always emphatically public, everything is political, and ideology trumps love, family, friendship or any refuge from the glare of the party and its public. Spies are everywhere, monitoring the slightest of offenses. Friends betray you, as do lovers. Family members denounce their own mothers and fathers and siblings and sons and daughters. The cause, which is usually a permanently revolutionary one, always matters more than any individual’s possible innocence. You are, in fact, always guilty before being proven innocent. You always have to prove a negative. And no offense at any point in your life is ever forgotten or off the table.

I don't agree with Andrew Sullivan on a lot of things, but he is an interesting and original thinker.

Why Reason Turned Into A Dead End For Enlightenment Philosophy by Nathanael Blake

Why Reason Turned Into A Dead End For Enlightenment Philosophy by Nathanael Blake

It is pointless to proclaim the supremacy of Enlightenment reason, because there is no such thing. There is only a bevy of competing philosophical systems, each claiming to be the one true “Reason.” Without a universal standard of public rationality, every criticism that Tracinski directs at “faith” applies just as readily to “reason.” Which philosopher got it right? Plato? Aquinas? Spinoza? Kant? Hegel? As MacIntyre asks: Which rationality?

I love this debate. The Enlightenment brought rationality so we no longer needed Revelation. But rationality itself needs a type of "first mover" to inform us as to what is actually rational. That back-and-forth IS the Enlightenment.

Making The ‘Miracle’: Jonathan Mayhew And The Enlightenment In America by Robert Tracinski

Making The ‘Miracle’: Jonathan Mayhew And The Enlightenment In America by Robert Tracinski

Enlightenment ideas about reason, religious freedom, individual rights, and the right of revolution were not just notions Jefferson mused about alone in his library in Monticello. They were preached from the pulpit by popular figures like Mayhew for decades before 1776 and published in widely read pamphlets addressing the political controversies of the day. Mayhew gives us an idea of how Enlightenment ideas made it out into the minds of the American common man.

 I love this kind of look at the philosophical underpinnings of the American Experiment.

How 9/11 Made a European Upper-Middle-Class Radical a Conservative by Annika Hernroth-Rothstein

How 9/11 Made a European Upper-Middle-Class Radical a Conservative by Annika Hernroth-Rothstein

I was raised in a country where that neutrality — that indifference before right and wrong — is a badge of honor. I was taught that morality is weakness, faith is ignorance, and the concept of good and evil is cause for ridicule.

On September 11, 2001, I saw, for the first time, the difference between fear and freedom, and I vowed not to be neutral between them, ever again.

So much insight and self-awareness.

Capitalism and the Gospel of Love By George Stanciu

We, too, can rise above the economic values instilled in us. Each of us, of course, must make a living, provide for our children and ailing parents, and that entails buying and selling, hiring and being hired in a capitalistic economy driven by self-interest, competition, and an insatiable demand for material goods. Yet, we have an extraordinary freedom in how we conduct the business of life. We can forsake the path of individual competitive success; we can refuse to treat others as commodities; we can step off the treadmill of consumerism; we can keep in mind that “purchasing is always a moral—and not simply economic—act;”[34] we can freely share our material abundance; we can give ourselves to others. The Gospel of Love does not have to be subservient to The Wealth of Nations.

Interesting reflections on capitalism and how to participate in it with love.

When Children Say They’re Trans by Jesse Singal

When Children Say They’re Trans by Jesse Singal

Where is the line between not “feeling like” a girl because society makes it difficult to be a girl and needing hormones to alleviate dysphoria that otherwise won’t go away? How can parents tell? How can they help their children gain access to the support and medical help they might need, while also keeping in mind that adolescence is, by definition, a time of fevered identity exploration?

Excellent, must-read article on transgender teens. So much of what we are seeing is misguided and we are playing with the live of children.

Where Is God? by Matt Walsh

Where Is God? by Matt Walsh

If God were to give us the beatific vision we claim to want, yet we were to approach it without first having developed a real love for Him, there would be no chance, from that point, for any real love to develop on our end. We would be so overwhelmed by His beauty, so taken by His majesty, so terrified by His power, so aghast and awestruck, that we could not possibly have anywhere within us the calm, quiet thoughtfulness required to really choose love.

Such a beautiful glimpse of God and His goodness.

Why Tomi Lahren Is Catastrophically Wrong About Abortion by Matt Walsh

Why Tomi Lahren Is Catastrophically Wrong About Abortion by Matt Walsh

But if we are right, then this matter deserves your undivided attention. If we are right, then our fight is the most important fight in the world. If we are right, then this mere "social issue" dwarfs every other issue and the only criticism you can make of our tactics and our rhetoric is that they are not radical enough. Certainly, at a minimum, if we are right then abortion is a holocaust and our government should abolish this holocaust for the same reason it abolished Hitler's holocaust. It should abolish it even more so, actually, because it is presently guilty of facilitating and funding this holocaust. So, you must either be radically in agreement with us or radically opposed. I do not see how any rational, thinking person could sit in the middle ground. There is no middle ground.

This is a fight that is rapidly coming to a head. It's time.

The Culture That Sustains America’s Constitution by Joseph Tartakovsky

The Culture That Sustains America’s Constitution by Joseph Tartakovsky

Constitutionalism is not a mere institutional form but a culture—a set of sentiments, habits and assumptions, a permeating spirit that animates an otherwise lifeless paper scheme. Without this instinctive loyalty, the Constitution’s checks and balances are barricades of foam and counterweights of butterfly’s breath. It is not in having a constitution that our strength lies, but in cherishing it. So long as we keep the faith, our Constitution will be displaced no sooner than an ant tips over the Statue of Liberty.

Good reminder of why we must cherish our Constitution.

American History, Renewed by Charles Upton Sahm

American History, Renewed by Charles Upton Sahm

Teaching American history is often fraught with controversy, but Gilder Lehrman has stayed above the political fray, thanks to its primary-source document approach. “Our constant North Star is the collection,” notes Tim Bailey, director of education and the 2009 National History Teacher of the Year. “We don’t have an ideological agenda. We believe in teaching history from the words of the people who created our history. . . . Educators shouldn’t be interpreters of history but guides of history.”

This is an excellent history resource and I'm glad to see they are getting some good press.

The Sexual Revolution’s Angry Children by Kay Hymowitz

The Sexual Revolution’s Angry Children by Kay Hymowitz

The sexual revolution stripped young women of the social support they need to play gatekeeper, just as it deprived men of a positive vision, or even a reason, for self-restraint.

This is a great analysis of where the #MeToo episodes originated and why they became somewhat inevitable.

The Only Thing Being 'Appropriated' In Our Culture Is Womanhood by Matt Walsh

The Only Thing Being 'Appropriated' In Our Culture Is Womanhood by Matt Walsh

A white person can wear all the Chinese garb she wants and it will have no impact at all on China or Chinese people. She is not pretending to be Chinese. She is not trying to fundamentally alter the Chinese identity itself. But a "transgender" person who says he is a woman is in fact demanding that the very definition of womanhood be changed to accommodate him. The LGBT camp insists that all of the things that are unique to women — their bodies, their reproductive capacities, their chromosomes, their very biology — must not count for anything anymore. Womanhood is nothing more than a feeling, a declaration, and a costume. A man can "become a woman" by putting on high heels.

Brilliant. It's exactly what I have been saying but more pithy.

What does America have to complain about? by Charles Murray

What does America have to complain about? by Charles Murray

The central truth of my pessimism is that the ideal behind the American project, of free people living under a benevolent limited government, is never going to reach maturity. It is dead. The central truth of my optimism is that government is still at the periphery of my daily life — that I can live in the presence of Supreme Court justices who exasperate me, bureaucrats who enrage me, members of Congress who seem devoid of courage and principle, and a president who in my opinion is in need of some really good meds — and nonetheless go about living a wonderful life through the institutions of family, community, vocation and faith that are the wellsprings of human happiness.

Despite a very pessimistic outlook, Murray finds many reasons for optimism. We need this.

C. S. Lewis and the Great War by Joseph Loconte

C. S. Lewis and the Great War by Joseph Loconte

What Lewis found was something the Great War nearly destroyed for him: an explanation for his deepest longing, the desire for joy. What he discovered, from his own careful study of the gospels, helped him cast off his doubts: a vision of God’s grace as well as his holiness. Here, in the life and teachings of Jesus, was “the only comfort” as well as “the supreme terror.”

I love C.S. Lewis so much. Everything he says is so deep and so original. Reading about his conversion and experience in the war just gives me deeper insight into him.

In the Footsteps of Brasidas by MIguel Monjardino

In the Footsteps of Brasidas by MIguel Monjardino

Courage, resiliency, and adaptation take practice. Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War demonstrates how crucial the social, economic, and political contexts are for making informed political choices. Understanding this is vital for the Hoplites, Argonauts, Helots, and Barbarians of the Republic, most of whom will pursue science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) degrees at the undergraduate and graduate level. They belong to the Google Generation and are fully digital. But as Joseph E. Aoun writes in his book Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, we all need a new type of literacy. Data and information are not enough for a good education in a free society.

This kind of immersion in the classics is so desperately needed to sustain a free population.

The Dark Side of the Enlightenment by Yoram Hazony

The Dark Side of the Enlightenment by Yoram Hazony

This view of “reason”—and of its power, freed from the shackles of history, tradition and experience—is what Kant called “Enlightenment.” It is completely wrong. Human reason is incapable of reaching universally valid, unassailably correct answers to the problems of science, morality and politics by applying the methods of mathematics.

Although I believe what we call The Enlightenment has many great features, it definitely deserves a clear-headed rethinking.

Why Giant High Schools Just Can’t Help Messed-Up Kids by Auguste Meyrat

Why Giant High Schools Just Can’t Help Messed-Up Kids by Auguste Meyrat

Contrary to popular belief, large schools actually discourage cliques and hierarchies. To maintain stability and order, administrators and teachers leave less and less freedom to students: passing periods and lunch periods are shortened, talking discouraged, and associations supervised through larger, more time-consuming extracurricular programs. Life for students is highly regimented.

 Indeed, some liken this to prison. Someone watches them not just during school hours, but after and before the school day as well. Does this mean critics are right to point out that school officials hope to marginalize parents’ influence and home life? Not deliberately. They simply want minimize variables that might upset the machine. To be fair, parents demand a secure, orderly environment—and, oppressive as it seems, this is what it looks like.

Brilliant must-read article on what our public schools are doing to our children.

Planned Princesshood by Faith Moore

Planned Princesshood by Faith Moore

Feminist groups want to reimagine Disney princesses in their own image, using the princesses little girls love as tools for propaganda. Planned Parenthood selling abortion as a feminine ideal is the ultimate villainous ruse. Like Snow White’s wicked stepmother, they want to offer girls a poisonous idea in a bright, appealing package.

As Dennis Prager says, "The Left destroys everything it touches."

A Gift of Grace to the United States by Lance Morrow

A Gift of Grace to the United States by Lance Morrow

I admired Martin Luther King as much as I admired any American in the twentieth century. I felt—still do—a reverence for him. Charisma is Greek for “a gift of grace.” King was a gift of grace to the United States—a country that may have been unworthy of the gift, or else unable to understand it. Toward the end of his life, blacks had given up—a bit—on King and his ways. With amiable humor, they called him “De Lawd.” 

Nice piece on the history and person of MLK.

Please, Not Another Christian Think Piece On Culture by Joshua Gibbs

Please, Not Another Christian Think Piece On Culture by Joshua Gibbs

What does it profit a man if he changes the whole world but loses his own soul? We are loathe to admit this a possibility. Our ideal marriage of culture and piety is, say, a Christian bike shop that sends a toe clip to Kenya every time someone buys a BMX. Such a scheme is now world-changing de rigueur, and while I take no pleasure in speaking so cynically, “changing the world” is often little more than a marketing scheme. The brand is a dead concept. Now, we demand movements.

Another iconoclastic article from my mentor Joshua Gibbs.

Dear Annoying Parkland Kids: We Gave You A Pretty Awesome World, Try Not To Mess It Up by Robert Tracinski

Dear Annoying Parkland Kids: We Gave You A Pretty Awesome World, Try Not To Mess It Up by Robert Tracinski

The world we older generations have given today’s kids is actually pretty awesome. We can’t protect them from every danger and every risk, and we can’t stop every tragedy like the Parkland shooting. But by historical standards, our kids will be safer, healthier, and wealthier, and they can expect to live longer and more untroubled lives than we did, or than our parents did, or than our grandparents did.

 I can see, though, why they wouldn’t realize any of this, because there are some who have a political interest in making things look worse.

This is a message that needs to get out.

The Backlash Is Building By Rod Dreher

The Backlash Is Building By Rod Dreher

I’m not sure if it’s possible to convey to you how remarkable this is, because you don’t know this man. The idea that someone of his class, background, education, and temperament has bought an AR-15 because he doesn’t believe the center is going to hold, and because he fears the progressive march, is stunning. If you are inclined to dismiss this as fraidy-cat fearmongering, you are making a big, big mistake.

Interesting thoughts on what to do as we see the center failing to hold...

Enemies Of The People By Rod Dreher

Enemies Of The People By Rod Dreher

You know what’s going to happen? Middle-class white people who find Donald Trump vulgar and beyond the pale, but who keep their mouths shut about what they really think so they will keep their jobs, understanding that the only thing standing between them and ruin is the goodwill of people from the culturally privileged tribes. They will correctly figure that there is no way to tell from one day to the next which of their words or deeds might cost them their careers. They won’t tell anybody what they’re thinking, but quietly, they will reconcile themselves to voting for Donald Trump, or whoever his successor is — not because they love Trump, but because they fear progressives in power.

One of my favorite, very thoughtful conservatives issues a trenchant warning to Progressives.

If You Want Your Child to Succeed, Don’t Sell Liberal Arts Short by Michael Zimm

If You Want Your Child to Succeed, Don’t Sell Liberal Arts Short by Michael Zimm

Throughout history it has been common for people to study subjects with no immediate relationship to their intended professions. In antiquity, education was intended to enrich students’ lives. Pragmatic benefits such as rhetorical ability, logical reasoning and business skills were welcome byproducts of a good education. The phrase “liberal arts” comes from the Latin word liberalis, meaning “worthy of a free person.” A liberal-arts education gives someone the freedom to participate fully in civic life.

A liberal arts education is one that is appropriate for those who want to be free.

13 Ways Public Schools Incubate Mental Instability In Kids by Stella Morabito

13 Ways Public Schools Incubate Mental Instability In Kids

During their time in that maze, kids learn to “socialize,” basically by finding their place in a school’s hierarchy of cliques.
This sort of pecking order dynamic tends to breed resentment, status anxiety, and social dysfunction. Combine that with the toxic effects of social media and family breakdown, and you’ve got a deadly brew. Public schooling is increasingly unhealthy for kids’ emotional stability.

It is so clear that the current educational model is making our kids worse.

Getting Serious about God by NR Interview

Getting Serious about God

“Nice” is an adjective that describes some vague and superficial pleasantness. If God exists, he is goodness, beauty, and truth — but not “nice.” It is a reminder that many have settled for an idol instead of the real God.

This iconoclastic article really speaks to me about the need to see God as holy, not as a genie.

A Gun-Control Measure Conservatives Should Consider By David French

A Gun-Control Measure Conservatives Should Consider By David French

What if, however, there was an evidence-based process for temporarily denying a troubled person access to guns? What if this process empowered family members and others close to a potential shooter, allowing them to “do something” after they “see something” and “say something”? I’ve written that the best line of defense against mass shootings is an empowered, vigilant citizenry. There is a method that has the potential to empower citizens even more, when it’s carefully and properly implemented.

It’s called a gun-violence restraining order, or GVRO.

I have a lot of respect for David French. So I believe this idea is one definitely worth considering.

Research Keeps Showing This Kind Of Teaching Is Very Effective. So Why Won’t Schools Use It? by Joy Pullman

Research Keeps Showing This Kind Of Teaching Is Very Effective. So Why Won’t Schools Use It? 

Rather than specific, concrete, knowledge-focused, systematically constructed, and carefully tested, the dominant methods teacher’s colleges pass on and state licensure requirements reinforce are open-ended, abstract, leaderless or leader-lite, focused on process instead of content, descended from romantic ideology rather than proven experience, and so on.

It's been shown that Classically-inspired "Direct Instruction" actually works. Yet all the incentives motivating the educational "blob" point in the opposite direction.

#MediocrityToo by Heather MacDonald

#MediocrityToo by Heather MacDonald

If the #MeToo movement only reduces sexual predation in the workplace, it will have been a force for good. Its most likely result, however, will be to unleash a torrent of new gender and race quotas throughout the economy and culture, on the theory that disparities in representation and employment are due to harassment and bias.

She has some interesting insight into the future implications of the #MeToo movement.

Liberals have lost their minds over immigration by Damon Linker

Liberals have lost their minds over immigration

But a surprisingly large number of liberals are taking a third, and very different, approach — not claiming that cuts to legal immigration shouldn't be made, but that the very act of proposing and defending them in the first place is morally illegitimate. These liberals appear to believe that immigration restrictionists should be excluded on principle from participating in public debate and discussion about immigration policy in the United States.
This is absurd.

When the Left claims that any discussion of immigration levels is de facto racists, they are setting the country up for an unwinable war.

The Question That Reveals the Heart of the Culture Wars by David French

The Question That Reveals the Heart of the Culture Wars

Our American differences are growing so very profound. Yes, we battle over tax rates and policing tactics. But we also battle over the deepest questions in life. We battle over reality itself, and we do so as enclaves on the cultural left increasingly brook no dissent. The cultural indoctrination begins early, and it’s intense. To fully understand, talk to conservative parents and kids in our most progressive public and private schools.
What is a man? It’s a question they dare not ask. If asked, there is an answer they dare not give. That’s how wide our divide has become.

If we can't define and make men, what will become of us?

Growth, Not Equality by Amity Shlaes

Growth, Not Equality

Free marketeers may sometimes win elections, but they are not winning U.S. history. In recent years, the consensus regarding the American past has slipped leftward, and then leftward again. No longer is American history a story of opportunity, or of military or domestic triumph. Ours has become, rather, a story of wrongs, racial and social. Today, any historical figure who failed at any time to support abolition, or, worse, took the Confederate side in the Civil War, must be expunged from history. Wrongs must be righted, and equality of result enforced.

I love Amity Shlaes. She is always original and interesting!

"This is Serious": Facebook Begins its Downward Spiral by Nick Bilton

"This is Serious": Facebook Begins its Downward Spiral

But the fallout from that success has also become increasingly obvious, especially since the 2016 election, which prompted a year of public relations battles over the company’s most fundamental problems. And now, as we enter 2018, Zuckerberg is finally owning up to it: Facebook is in real trouble.

Facebook seems to be realizing that it has real potential downsides... what does that mean? Who knows?

Trump to PC: “No More!” by Myron Magnet

Trump to PC: “No More!”
Two op-eds in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal and one on this website brilliantly call attention to aspects of the vast political and cultural change, still in its early stages, that is gathering force in this country as inexorably as the spring thaw breaks up a frozen river, first as a trickle and then a torrent. Donald Trump figures in all three stories.
I certainly don't like Trump's crudeness, I teach at a Classical school that values beauty after all, but he does say things that are actually true although no one wants to admit it.

The Claims Against Aziz Ansari Reveal the Defects of Modern Sexual Morality by David French

The Claims Against Aziz Ansari Reveal the Defects of Modern Sexual Morality

It was inevitable. The #MeToo movement was going to collide directly with all the ambiguity and pain of the college sexual-assault tribunals. We were going to read not about sexual assault but instead about a date gone wrong — where two parties had different perceptions, and all we could really know is that another young woman would feel used and traumatized, and a confused man would find his reputation in tatters because of a sexual encounter that never at any point (to him) had seemed inappropriate or wrong.

When we get away from a Biblical worldview on relations between the sexes, we get a mess!

Policing Sexual Desire by Heather MacDonald

Policing Sexual Desire

Actually, it is not the patriarchy that makes sexual decisions “utterly complex”; it is sex itself. Sex is the realm of the inarticulate and irrational, inherently fraught with “fear,” “shame,” and “guilt.” Sexual seduction is carried on through ambiguity and indirection; exposing that ambiguity to light, naming what may or may not be going on, is uncomfortable and risks denial and rejection. “Dangerously outdated gender norms” are not what make it difficult to say no to sexual advances; contemporary gender norms have confused these already fraught situations. Traditional mores set the default for premarital sex at “no,” at least for females. This default recognized the different sexual drives of males and females and the difficulties of bargaining with the male libido. The default “no” to premarital sex meant that a female did not have to negotiate the refusal with every opportuning male; it was simply assumed. 

Powerful case for traditional sexual mores that protected women AND men.

Studying Western Civilization in the South Bronx by Jillian Kay Melchior

Studying Western Civilization in the South Bronx

“First, you need to know the concept of what freedom means to be hungry for it,” Ms. Diaz says. She adds that these books “are for everyone. They were different people in different centuries, but at the end, they’re thinking about the same problems. And if we’re talking about this, it’s because we’re not where we need to be.”

I love that the value of Western Civilization's greatest works is being rediscovered!