Crying Shame

It is difficult to tell the difference these days between what is the serious and the spoof. For example, I came across this recently, an article in the student magazine of ...

Rash Thinking

In a recent article, I mentioned the death of my friend, M…… D……, when I was 16 and he was but a few months older than I. He has been present in my mind more than usual ...

Guilt Complex

The selfie is perhaps the defining cultural artifact of our time. Me and the Mona Lisa, Me and the Pyramids, Me and the Colosseum, with the emphasis on the Me, of course; at least ...

Nighthawks, Edward Hopper

People Are Overrated

Solitude is a blissful disengagement from the horrors of modern-day life, even if forced upon us by a government lockdown. The trouble with the present situation is the idiot box. ...

Full Bore

I used to think that the walls of my flat in Paris were solid enough to be soundproof; until, that is, the new tenant moved in next door. He was not an unpleasant young man (of ...

Philadelphia, PA

Coronavirus and Social Unrest

The coronavirus hostilities are increasing, it seems. Last week, I called up Paul Gottfried about something he wants me to write for Chronicles. As soon as he answered the phone, ...

Off the Rails

I have long thought that if it were not for complaint, we should have very little to talk about. Complaint is like crime in the theories of the first real sociologist, Émile ...

Pete Buttigieg

Straight Talk

Pete Buttigieg’s success in Iowa has, according to The Washington Post, “unleashed emotion” among Democrat party members and reignited the question of “whether a gay ...

Prince Harry

A Desperate Search for Uniqueness

O Hamlet, what a falling off was there! The contrast between Prince Harry and his grandmother is not only that between one generation and another, but between one conception of ...

Uneasy Virtue

We do not live in a golden age of the four cardinal virtues; perhaps there never was such an age, which is why life has always been such a mess. But we have gone further than our ...

A World Empty of Moral Meaning

A friend who is a doctor told me—and therefore it must be true—that a well-known social media site has decided that from now on it will not publish how many people “liked” ...

Why Americans Should Distrust “Mental Health Experts”

A couple of psychiatrists appeared on CNN on Sunday to discuss the president, and their exchange serves as an apt reminder of why Americans, and conservatives in particular, ...

Intersectional Cannibalism

Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, They rave, recite, and madden round the land. —Pope We value rights because, as the terrible old proverb says, man is a wolf to man. ...

Why Young Americans Are So Unhappy

The general method, or rather hustle, of the Confidence Man Steven Pinker is to use evidence of greater material well-being to justify the value judgment that human life has never ...

Es Vedra

Better Off Collecting Stamps

When I reached maturity, or at any rate stopped growing, I was of average height. Now I am below average height, the world having grown taller than I in the meantime. In the ...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The Rise of AOC

This last political season, a 29-year-old bartender named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described “radical,” came “dancing across the water” to conquer the Democratic ...


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