A collection of 203 posts
What cancel culture has just mown down isn’t simply Flannery O’Connor or her works, but our ability to view them through any other lens except that of doctrine.
Rather than the emergence of a China-dominated world order, as some in the West and many in Beijing propose, science fiction writers illuminate realities that could end up reprising the failures of the former Soviet Union.
Voinovich’s legacy has a personal aspect for me.
The poverty of Macedon made incense rarer than in Greece or the Near East, and it also made offerings rarer.
The book explains a half-century arc of intellectual history culminating in our current state of histrionic overreach in the name of social justice.
The New Yorker story remains an albatross around my neck.
Money is a consistently recurring theme. Trump told Bolton at one point that other presidents had not talked about money, but that he liked to do so.
Marx’s ideas have been debunked by economists; Freud’s ideas have been debunked by psychologists.
The connection between SF and liberty is not simply an accidental byproduct of the colorful history of SF publishing, but a necessary one tied to certain fundamentals of the genre.
Feudal societies were hierarchical, with clearly-defined roles and responsibilities for everyone. The knights fought for all, the priests prayed for all, and the peasants worked for all.
“This book will probably strike many readers as the work of an ill-tempered and mean-spirited fellow,” Banfield explained, “but facts are facts, however, unpleasant, and they have to be faced unblinkingly by anyone who really wants to improve matters in the cities.”
It is by now a familiar truism that the Internet—and social media, in particular—has awarded the intolerant, the narrow-minded, and the censorious unprecedented power. To this challenge from below, publishers have, by and large, responded with dismaying timidity. Large multinational publishing firms have hastily withdrawn controversial titles and
The publication of his electrifying dispatch from the Kentucky Derby on May 2nd, 1970, had announced him as among the most innovative and powerful voices in American letters.
Gregg finishes the book by concluding that the success of Western civilisation rests on the “four theses” of creation, freedom, justice, and faith.
The War of Return is an important book and, unquestionably, a welcome corrective to the plethora of myths, lies, and misconceptions that litter the discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.