We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Michael worries about dying old mill towns in upstate New York and similar places and wonders why the party of free enterprise doesn’t have more to offer people dwelling in them. He imagines a disability fraudster dwelling in Garbutt, N.Y., and asks what we (we conservatives) are going to do for him and his sad little town. (Among the many dishonest responses to my piece were those treating the addled fraud artist in Garbutt as my hostile literary invention rather than Michael’s sympathetic one; no doubt Michael will have a lot to answer for the next time he visits the Greater Garbutt Chamber of Commerce.) My answer is that if there’s nothing for you in Garbutt but penury, dysfunction, and addiction, then get the hell out.
Of course it is. It is not the Court's job to reinforce culture, customs, taboos, and traditions other than their own. We can label some things or people as immoral or depraved, but there is freedom too.
Pop culture changes as Judeo-Christian standards decline. Adultery used to have a death sentence unless you were royalty or an aristocrat. Today, it seems unremarkable as habits of the lower classes and those of the rich and powerful converge.
UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour, who insisted that there’s no difference between the once supposedly unassimilable Irish Catholics and East European Jews and the new Pushtun goatherds and Mogadishu hoodlums. It’s one of the curious aspects of self-proclaimed “multiculturalists” that they are, essentially, uniculturalists: they think everybody’s the same. But sometimes history doesn’t repeat itself — and Emma Lazarus’ lousy poem is an even lousier guide to social policy.
...the long-belated saga of the Minnesota Coronary Experiment may also make a broader point about how science gets done: it suggests just how difficult it can be for new evidence to see the light of day when it contradicts widely held theories.
Well, you have to laugh. Socrates would have laughed, because these children are 100% immersed in Enlightenment Western Civ, and don't even want to know what it is or where it came from. I have seen plenty of willful ignorance in my life, but this has to take the cake. SAT-bright students, voting for ignorance of Homer, Plato, the Old Testament, Paul, Beowulf, Augustine, Aquinas, Lorenzo de Medici, Michelangelo, Rousseau, Shakespeare, Newton, Adam Smith, Martin Luther, Locke. Wow. They won't know bupkus and thus will not be worth a serious conversation.
And since all of modern physics, chemistry, medicine, and engineering are aspects and products of Western Civ too, perhaps they might consider eliminating those oppressive white male patriarchal things.
Ignorant kids, standing on the shoulders of giants while denying it. Fascinating phenomenon, the hubris of ignorance.
If I were there with a microphone and videotape, it would be fun to ask them what civilization they might prefer to know - or live in.
What strikes me about it is the utter pointlessness of it. The endless posing and posturing has no end because it has no end point. A faithful Christian at least has the serenity of his communion with God. The Muslim, at the click of the detonator, knows he will be with Allah. Climate change fanatics have nothing but a hopeless misery. Even if all of their policies are enacted, nothing comes of it.
Problem is that the climate moonbats discredit worthy efforts at habitat conservation and the like. Serious air pollution, for example, almost eliminated in the US. That's good.
A bunch of government lawyers can mess up your life for a long time, even if they are wrong. Makes more sense for a business to not be a hero - just shut up and pay the extortion.
Climate models appear to have no predictive capacity. Very short-term meteorological models have some use, but are often wrong. Economic models are famously wrong. Ordinary common sense people like me anticipated, planned for, and profited modestly from the internet bubble and the housing bubble. Not the professional math geniuses. Why not?
When people who have been loyal to conservative causes and conservative politicians their whole life find themselves being called racists and bigots by those people they supported, they start to feel like they have been conned. When ruling class organs publicly argue that vast parts of the culture must be destroyed, that traditional America must be wiped out, people hear a declaration of war. The response is not going to be “yes sir, may I have another.” The response, to quote the late Andrew Breitbart, is going to be “Fuck you. War!”
The Incredible Cluelessness of Donald Trump - Trump has demonstrated over and over again
that he doesn't know the slightest thing about policy. The GOP is
supporting him anyway.
Creatives, we are multi-dimensional creatures. Let’s not let our abilities be defined, limited and constrained. Let them flourish like the enlightening work we do… The work we do is important and it is empowering, particularly when it is bringing awareness to social justice issues. Much of creative work does exactly this while other sectors of society refuse to acknowledge the social ills we endure and even erases them.
It was 23 F. in NYC this morning. Warm would be welcome at this point. When you figure a day's temp varies 30 degrees, what matters 1 degree per century? Even if it is real? Who cares?
When over 30% of working age men aren’t participating in the labor force, trouble is brewing. It’s even worse when you consider the 25 to 54 year old male participation rate has declined from 97% in the 1950’s and 1960’s to below 88% today. Much of the anger building in this country is the result of men in their prime earning years seeing their jobs shipped overseas, outsourced, or taken by HB1 workers. The backlash against illegal immigrants is understandable.
The politicization of the humanities was well under way when I was an English major in the early 1990s, and my education suffered as a result. This wasn't because I was so oppressed as a conservative, but because in roughly half my classes, there was no easier route to an A than to argue that some long-dead author was a sexist pig, racist cretin or homophobic jerk. Being, like so many college students, not overfond of unnecessary labor, I’m afraid I all too frequently slithered along the easy path to the 4.0.
The 
Image from 
The 6 elements 
Image: That 
Were I a Stanford alum, I'd never give them another penny. Not that they need it anyway.
Image stolen from 
The real pain 
Pic of Connecticut resident Keith Richards, 
