If it weren’t for the Internet, I’d never have met the woman I love…or needed to call in the Canadian Mounties to fend off a cyber-stalker who tried to steal my identity. Technology enabled me to spend several thousand bucks, over the years, on plane and train fare for dates with total strangers. But it also meant I’d never have to … [Read More]

“You go hunting where the ducks are,” said Barry Goldwater. The successor to Barry’s Senate seat apparently believes that ducks come from Mexico and speak Spanish. For in July alone, John McCain made three separate appearances before Hispanic groups. Last week, he spoke to La Raza (The Race), where rival Barack Obama said, “The Latino community holds the election in its … [Read More]

To combat Islamic terrorists more effectively, the US government should spend some real energy on image management, perhaps hiring a big Hollywood guru. Consider Maliki’s alleged insouciance. It’s good for the mission for us to get slapped down by Maliki if it appeases the honor-obsessed locals. Indeed, it may have a double benefit: slowing down the insurgents and providing a face-saving … [Read More]

What did I learn from 8.5 years of graduate school in Creative Writing and English? Apart from useful stuff like how to structure a commercial screenplay, I realized that literature departments are where bad ideas go to die. That’s what I read between the lines of Russell Jacoby’s recent lament in the Chronicle of Higher Education: How is it that Freud … [Read More]

Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam have won near universal acclaim for their book, Grand New Party (albeit not from the editors of Taki’s Magazine—see here, here, and here). I trust, therefore, that they will not take umbrage at my criticisms, of which this will be the first of two installments. First, what is more of a complaint than a criticism, Grand … [Read More]

Friedrich Nietzsche observed, “it requires more genius to spend than to acquire"—making money being a question of diligence and cunning, wasting it a matter of taste. When the great philosopher wrote these words, he was actually concerned with the pervasiveness of the ascetic ideal among the capitalist elite: “The most industriousness of all ages—ours—does not know how
 to make anything of … [Read More]

The latest validation of James Burnham’s insight that “liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide” comes from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.  As the Daily Mail reported recently, Dr. Williams wrote an irenic letter to Moslem leaders in which he wrote that the doctrine of the Trinity “is difficult, sometimes offensive” to Moslems and in which he also apologized for … [Read More]

To watch the contortions over that New Yorker cover cartoon of the Obamas is to understand whom it is impermissible to offend in the America of 2008. The cartoon is a caricature of Michelle as an urban terrorist in an Angela Davis afro with an AK-47 slung over her back and a bandoleer of ammo in the Oval Office doing a … [Read More]

I’ve never been one for ruthless consistency. I learned young the fine art of emotional doublethink, from the experience of being at one and the same time: An orthodox Catholic who mentally assented to official Church teaching on sexuality, according to its 1917 formulation in the old Catholic Encyclopedia. A teenage boy. You needn’t read James Joyce to understand the game … [Read More]