Last week a federal judge decided that South Carolina’s plans to issue a cross featuring a cross and the words “I believe” amounted to government sponsorship of religion. If consistent, this judge will now spend her Christmas not at home with her family but challenging the legality of a national holiday that gives government preference to followers of the Christian faith. … [Read More]

In honor of the 2008-09 North American ski season, I give you the following rant. As of March 18, 2008, Taos Ski Valley in New Mexico, Alta and Deer Valley in Utah, and Mad River Glen in Vermont were the last skiers-only resorts in North America. The next day, Taos Ski Valley opened up its slopes to snowboarders. Now only three … [Read More]

In a recent phone conversation, Richard Spencer made an observation I then tried to qualify. Richard noted that Western Christians “are obsessed with being virtuous.” At a time when the Christian belief system has eroded, this fixation has led to exaggerated expressions of group self-denial and to the grotesque worship of the supposedly marginalized. I cannot say that Richard’s thesis struck … [Read More]

In electing Barack Obama, many liberals thought we might be closer to an America where race wouldn’t matter. But for California progressives, the same election proved that race mattered more than ever. California’s gay marriage ban referendum, known as Proposition 8, passed 52-48%. While whites narrowly opposed the ban 51-49%, blacks overwhelmingly supported the measure 70-30%. The trouncing of gay marriage … [Read More]

It has long been known that the Nobel Prizes in Peace and Literature are sometimes awarded to questionable characters such as Le Duc Tho, Yasser Arafat, and Dario Fo.  But even Nobel laureates in the hard sciences can make stupid pronouncements when they step outside their disciplines, as Chemistry laureate Harry Kroto recently proved in a broadside against religion published in … [Read More]

One of my favorite living essayists (let’s face it, few of them really measure up to the dead) is Thomas Sowell—who once or twice a year lets himself off the hook and instead of composing a column, pens a series of aphorisms designed at once to goad the reader into thinking, and to let the columnist spend a final summer weekend … [Read More]

Not that I need one, but the release of Diane English’s remake of The Women is a good excuse to revisit the George Cukor original.  It dates from 1939, that year when someone—maybe the Communists, although it doesn’t really sound like them—put soluble genius in Southern California’s drinking water and ended up giving us Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of … [Read More]

Just after the Berlin wall came down, I flew to Berlin with my German-Austrian wife and traveled around the city and its eastern parts. On visiting the Olympic stadium I told the taxi driver that my uncle, a hurdler, was the first athlete the Führer’s gaze fell upon as the parade of the 1936 games began, because we Greeks always go … [Read More]

Near Astor Place, you can actually sit in a Starbucks, enjoy a venti latte, and look out across the street onto—another Starbucks. I’m sure there are many other places where such a thing is possible. During the big Starbucks expansion in the late ’90s and early ’00s, it seem that one might not be able to escape the green logo of … [Read More]

“Do you think you could turn the volume down on that war game you’re playing so I can least pretend that you’re listening to me?” So my beloved asked, very sweetly, in her slight Dallas twang. What could I say? “Why sure, Sweetie. Just a second…. Okay, what were you saying?” Of course, she was saying something amazingly feminine, about the … [Read More]