Calling Harvey Weinstein a Pig May Be an Insult to Swine Everywhere, But…
… When He Walks Into a Courtroom He is You and Me
By David Churchill Barrow
There is an ongoing controversy upon the campus of Harvard University an a protest against Law Professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., an African-American jurist of renown, and Dean of the Winthrop House. Spray-Painted upon that house were DOWN WITH SULLIVAN!, OUR RAGE IS SELF DEFENSE, WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON! and YOUR SILENCE IS VIOLENCE.
Over 300 people have signed an online petition calling for his resignation as dean, and members of the Association of Black Harvard Women have addressed a public letter to him stating “You have failed us.” His sin? Agreeing to be part of the legal defense team of Harvey Weinstein.
Still an Idiot with a Machine Gun after All These Years
Great Moments in Chaos and Order, Part V
By Fred Tribuzzo
Paul Ehrlich is infamously attached to the notion that providing cheap fuel to the masses would be like giving an idiot a machine gun. The Left insists that idiot is still with us, primarily in the heartland where regular folks go about their lives with common sense appreciation for fossil fuels that power a standard of living never before seen in human history. In Ehrlich’s 1968 The Population Bomb, he predicted famine for America, starvation for millions before the unleashing of the 1970s Disco rage. Those of us remaining would be eating bark and stuffing old newspapers in our boots to stay warm from the sneaky, man-induced new ice age. Imagine, never to be thrilled on the dance floor by the bass drum clocking in at 120 beats per minute, anchoring the melodies of Boz Scaggs and the Bee Gees by thousands of lounge bands across the land.
Making Gotham Great Again, Part 3: Ronald Reagan and the Republican Establishment
By Shant Eghian
One of the most innovative aspects of The Dark Knight Returns is that Miller very clearly places Gotham City in the real world of 1980s America, and not a hyper exaggerated comic book universe. Ronald Reagan is president, the United States is locked in an ever-escalating Cold War, and real-life celebrities like David Letterman and Dr Ruth Westheimer are murdered by the Joker. Of course, Miller never comes right out and names these people, but by the way he draws them, it is easy enough to figure out what he is up to.
Based on previous installments of this series, you may assume that Frank Miller would be very supportive of Ronald Reagan. After all, Batman is a stand in for a type of conservatism that, to paraphrase Whittaker Chambers, recognizes the reality of evil and fights it instead of smiling and waving at it (Chambers, Witness, 704). In a time when Reagan was constantly (and rightly) denouncing the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” while many on the Left did not want to hear it, a reader may easily think The Dark Knight Returns is thinly veiled pro-Reagan propaganda. When Reagan does show up approximately halfway through the book however, Miller paints him in a less than flattering light. In almost every appearance, Miller portrays Reagan as a doddering, uncaring fool, who throws American soldiers into Cold War conflicts for no particular reason.
Check out the previous installments in this series: Part 1, The Media, and Part 2, Law and Order
Netflix’s ‘Narcos’: Subtle Yet Deadly Anti-Americanism
By David Walls-Kaufman
As a writer, I’ve kept a close watch of Netflix dramas, keeping an eye on plot and dialogue while imagining what the script might look like on my own iPad. I’m doing this because I have the burning hope that Liberty Island and Taliesen Nexus arise like Netflix to become a cultural/entertainment colossus on the side of freedom and the American experiment of government serving the people.
I’ve greatly enjoyed watching Narcos, and thought the PC in the story was less nauseating than most… Until the other night, watching the close of season 3.
Robespierre’s Radical Liberalism: Reflections on Ruth Scurr’s Fatal Purity
Were Robespierre and the Jacobins Proto-Socialists?
By Shant Eghian
Having recently finished Ruth Scurr’s biography on Robespierre, Fatal Purity, I have had my world turned upside down on the actions of Robespierre and the course of the French Revolution. Don’t get me wrong, I still think the French Revolution was a disaster, a massively overblown response to legitimate grievances against the ancien regime. But Scurr’s biography blew apart many preconceptions that I had about what the French Revolutionaries really wanted, the differences between the various revolutionary factions, and the conditions that lead to the infamous Committee of Public Safety that summarily executed thousands of innocent French citizens.
Like any biography, particularly one about a controversial figure such as Robespierre, Scurr’s biography is subject to different criticisms. She seems to me to try to be objective as possible, but of course, no history is perfect, and is always subject to different interpretations. This being said, the book seems to be generally favorably reviewed, and I am no expert on the French Revolution, so I am not going to review the book. Instead, I am just going to make some general observations about things I learned and what some valuable lessons from Robespierre’s life and role in the French Revolution could be.
I think the most important myth that Scurr’s book shatters is that Robespierre and the Jacobins were some kind of Proto-Socialists. This is a view held by both Robespierre’s admirers and detractors.
Faith In Our Fathers
The FBI and Journalists’ Collusion to Throw the Election Will Corrode America’s Soul
By Roy Griffis
One of the best books you haven’t read is called Flags of our Fathers. Written by James Bradley, the son of Corpsman John Bradley, one of the six men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, it is a gripping recounting of the little known fates and history of the men on Mount Suribachi in that most iconic of photographs.
As a boy, young James knew that his father was famous and respected in their little town for something, but since his father would neither talk about the mysterious event and even trained his children to deflect the telephone calls that continually came in asking for interviews, it was not until his father died that the boy learned his father was famous.
What You Believe Can Kill You… Or at Least, Kill Your Soul…
By Roy Griffis
Last Thursday (June 6, 2018) was the 74thanniversary of World War II’s , the Allied invasion of Europe that began the final, inexorable push to get the Nazi foot off the neck of… well, the World.
Google (one of the most valuable companies in the world) decided not to feature a remembrance of that day on the splash page of their search engine. Apparently, it wasn’t important enough to note. On Sunday, June 10, 2018, this was featured on their splash page….
Why Child Sacrifice Is Easy to Imagine
By Audie Cockings
Yesterday I read a shocking article by National Geographic detailing the methodical sacrificial killing of 140 children ages five to fourteen. The broken child remains were recently discovered and unearthed near Chan Chan, an archeological complex in coastal Peru. The event is estimated to be five hundred years old.
Young ones were donated by parents to be held down, sternums severed in half, and rib cages broken open so that the undersized hearts could be cut out of the bodies. The article does not state whether the children were still alive during that procedure, but that all were killed at the same time –which tells me that there were at least 140 community members who systematically killed at once. The researchers also mentioned that there were few “false starts” in the cutting, indicating that ritual members were skilled with the procedure and ceremonial blades.
A Man, Measured
The newest installment in an ongoing series of essays on culture
By Roy Griffis
Having a birthday this week lead me to some reflection. Not on myself, of course, since I’m already too hip for the room. But I’d just seen the very decent 12 Strong the weekend before and I’d been contemplating why this enjoyable story of duty, heroism, and general smack-down of some very real, very bad guys had performed rather poorly at the box office after receiving the traditional golden shower from a lot of film critics.
To ask the question is to answer it: because it’s an enjoyable story of duty, heroism, and a general smack-down of some very real, very bad guys.
Johnny Tremain: Rites of Passage in Classical Literature for Boys, Part 4
By David Churchill Barrow
“And some of us would die – so other men can stand up on their feet like men. A great many are going to die for that. They have in the past. They will a hundred years from now – two hundred. God grant there will always be men good enough.”
Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes is an overtly moralistic tale, and an unabashed, old-fashioned ode to the patriotism and spirit of the founding generation. It was written in the afterglow of “the Greatest Generation’s” victory in WWII. Its protagonist begins the story as a uniquely talented and bright silversmith’s apprentice. Johnny was only too aware of his best qualities – which in turn brought out his worst. He lorded over and bullied the other apprentices, especially the older but duller Dove. The blowback was disastrous – literally crippling – and changed the course of a life Johnny had well planned.
