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Intolerance

Liberal Intolerance and Naomi Riley’s Firing by Cathy Young. There is much handwringing today, both from liberals and disaffected conservatives, about the deplorable intellectual climate on the right: blinkered ideology, disdain for facts, demonization of opponents. Sure enough, such behavior [...]

Failure

The Failure of Arab Liberals by Sohrab Ahmari. Lamenting the illiberal fruit of the Arab Spring has become a favorite pastime of the Western commentariat. A year and a half after the movement’s outbreak, pundits from across the political spectrum [...]

Quote

Children are charades their parents are called upon to solve. Friedrich Hebbel

Notes

The WSJ reviews Notes on a Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historian by Bernard Lewis.

Legacy

Much to Answer For by Glenn C. Loury. The esteemed political scientist and criminologist James Q. Wilson died in March. He wrote many important works, including a leading textbook on American government currently in its twelfth edition. He was awarded [...]

Beware

Beware the Creeping Cracks of Bias by Daniel Sarewitz. Alarming cracks are starting to penetrate deep into the scientific edifice. They threaten the status of science and its value to society. And they cannot be blamed on the usual suspects [...]

Target

Obama, Romney, and Equality by James Ceaser. If the test of a clever orator is the ability to sell two incompatible positions at the same time, President Obama must already rank as one of the most adept rhetoricians in American [...]

Oversimplification

Freud’s Not Dead; He’s Just Really Hard to Find by Susan Krauss Whitbourne. According to a claim made several years ago in the New York Times, Freud’s theory is still taught in universities, but not in psychology classes. When asked [...]

Unlimited

Money Unlimited by Jeffrey Toobin. When Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was first argued before the Supreme Court, on March 24, 2009, it seemed like a case of modest importance. The issue before the Justices was a narrow one. [...]

Writer

The Writer in the Family by Roger Rosenblatt. So there I stood at the front of my granddaughter Jessica’s fourth-grade classroom, still as a glazed dog, while Jessie introduced me to her classmates, to whom I was about to speak. [...]

Philosophical

Will Wilkinson reviews America the Philosophical by Carlin Romano. The jacket copy of Carlin Romano’s “America the Philosophical” trumpets the astonishing news that “America today towers as the most philosophical culture in the history of the world, an unprecedented marketplace [...]

Censored

A Censored Race War? by Thomas Sowell. When two white newspaper reporters for the Virginian-Pilot were driving through Norfolk, and were set upon and beaten by a mob of young blacks — beaten so badly that they had to take [...]

Humorlessness

Kidding Yourself Is No Laughing Matter by Tom Jacobs. There’s one at every comedy club: the guy sitting there stone-faced, while everyone around him is laughing. There are many possible explanations: He was dragged there by his girlfriend, doesn’t like [...]

Spirit

The Spirit of Geert Wilders by Mark Steyn. When I was asked to write a foreword to Geert Wilders’ new book, my first reaction, to be honest, was to pass. Mr. Wilders lives under 24/7 armed guard because significant numbers [...]

Buddy

HHS Sends $5.9 Million to Program Run by Obama Buddy by Keith Koffler. The Department of Health and Human Services last week announced it had awarded a $5.9 million grant to a University of Chicago Medical Center program tied to [...]

Flipped

The Big Flip by Todd S. Purdum. In July 1854, a man by the name of Erastus Haven, a professor of English and Latin at the University of Michigan, dared to speak up at the first state convention of a [...]

Don’t Wish

We Don’t All Wish to be California by Jennifer Rubin. So, understand what is going on here. The state refuses to cut spending. The high tax and excessive regulation regime depresses economic activity (unemployment is 11 percent) and thereby lowers [...]

Christie

William McGurn: Jerry Brown vs. Chris Christie In his January 2011 inaugural address, California Gov. Jerry Brown declared it a “time to honestly assess our financial condition and make the tough choices.” Plainly the choices weren’t tough enough: Mr. Brown [...]

Essence

The ‘Essence’ of Marriage by Dennis Byrne. While the inevitability of same-sex marriage now is a given — the only question remaining is when — I’m still trying to locate the why. When President Barack Obama last week endorsed same-sex [...]