The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Free Leadership Training Program

It’s called the United States Army. We had a couple of letters from our son who seems to be at the Holy Crap phase of training, where it has begun to dawn on him exactly what he has signed up for: Sergeant wakes them up in the middle of the night and makes them stand in formation […]

It’s Not Like Intellectuals Hating Their Stupid Parents Is a Cliché or Anything

Being clever and funny about the stupidity of one’s elders is one of the more vicious habits of youthful ingrates, and it’s generally impossible to appreciate one’s elders until you are yourself compelled to cope with the burden of responsibility and authority. Even then, some people are so smugly satisfied with their own superiority that they can’t […]

Rush Limbaugh Is Right: The Academic Pro-Pedophile Movement Is a Real Danger

Rush Limbaugh sparked criticism this week by pointing to an article in the British Guardian newspaper as evidence of “a movement to normalize pedophilia.” Limbaugh’s liberal critics are ridiculing his contention, but the movement he described is very real. In 2002, Judith Levine published Harmful to Minors, a book which stirred a massive controversy because of […]

You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught

“In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of […]

‘Learning French,’ IYKWIMAITYD

Valérie Allain as Mireille Belleau in French in Action (1987) “Many have criticized the depiction of Mireille as gratuitously sexist. The camera often lingers on the actress’s chest and bare legs. ‘You’re seeing the videotape through a male gaze,’ said one female teaching assistant who asked not to be identified.” — New York Times, March […]

Tenured, Yes. Radical, My Ass.

“Weapons are my business. You name it and I know it: guns, bombs, gas, fire, knives and everything else. . . . . “WHY ARE WE GROVELING? . . . “Are we dupes? Do the Red Pansies want to destroy us? If not, why do they mock all we believe in?” — “Raoul Duke” (Hunter […]

Ohio College Student Gets Restraining Order Against Her ‘Stalker’ Parents

The “helicopter parent” syndrome carried to an absurd extreme: A 21-year-old theatre student has obtained a civil stalking restraining order against her parents after convincing a judge that they attempt to control all aspects of her daily life. Aubrey Ireland is a gifted theatre major at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, […]

‘A Lucrative But Risky Decision’

That’s what the New York Times calls it when teenagers get good jobs: The New York Times seems concerned that teens in the fracking belt of eastern Montana are opting to work in the new oil-field economy right after high school rather than going straight on to college. A front-page story warns: Taking a job […]

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