Category: Culture

(An updated version of this essay lives here.) One of the most dangerous errors of our time is the belief that human beings are uniquely violent animals, barely restrained from committing atrocities on each other by the constraints of ethics, religion, and the state. It may seem odd to some to dispute this, given the… Continue reading The Myth of Man the Killer

One of the overdue lessons of 9/11 is that we can’t afford to sneer at physical courage any more. The willingness of New York firemen, Special Forces troops in Afghanistan, and the passengers of Flight 93 to put their lives on the line has given us most of the bright spots we’ve had in the… Continue reading Sneering at Courage

The longest-term stakes in the war against terror are not just human lives, but whether Western civilization will surrender to fundamentalist Islam and shari’a law. More generally, the overt confrontation between Western civilization and Islamist barbarism that began on September 11th of 2001 has also made overt a fault line in Western civilization itself —… Continue reading Today’s treason of the intellectuals

The Democratic Party fell off a cliff last night. Never mind their shiny new governorships — the `smart’ money pre-election was on them picking up an absolute majority of governor’s seats, and at the Congressional level they took a shellacking nearly as bad as 1994’s. The races Terry McAuliffe targeted as most critical — notably… Continue reading Post-postmodern politics

Consider spicy-hot food — and consider how recent it is as a mainstream phenomenon in the U.S. In 2002 many of us cheerfully chow down on Szechuan and Thai, habaneros and rellenos, nam pla and sambal ulek. Salsa outsells ketchup. But it wasn’t always that way. In fact it wasn’t that way until quite recently,… Continue reading The capsaicinization of American food

(Originally titled: Travelling in Texas) I was on the road in Texas last week, addressing Linux user groups in Dallas and Austin. I always enjoy visiting Texas. It’s a big, wide-open place full of generous people who cultivate a proper appreciation of some of my favorite things in life — firearms, blues guitar, and pepper… Continue reading The Non-Portability of Barbecue

A current New York Times news story, What If It’s All Been A Big Fat Lie, entertainingly chronicles the discovery that low-fat diets are bad for people. More specifically, that the substitution of carbohydrates like bread and pasta and potatoes for meat that we’ve all had urged on us since the early 1980s is probably… Continue reading Diet Considered as a Bad Religion

Mary Eberstadt’s Weekly Standard article The Elephant in the Sacristy shines a strong light on facts that will discomfit many of the politically correct. I don’t completely agree with her analysis; as Amy Welborn argues, Ms. Eberstadt is too quick to dismiss the role of the doctrine of celibacy in creating an ingrown, perfervid, and… Continue reading The Elephant in the Bath-House

Minnesota art student Luke Helder has been charged with the recent string of Midwestern mailbox bombings. There doesn’t seem to be much doubt that he’s the perpetrator. An art student. Yeah. That fits; the tone of the portentious twaddle in pipe-bomb-boy’s manifesto was exactly that of the artist manque, big ideas being handled stupidly by… Continue reading Terrorism Becomes Bad Art

Eugene Volokh comments that many of the leading promoters of racial identity politics in the U.S. have begun to lump Asians in with white people, but declines to attempt an interpretation. Actually this development is very easy to understand. All you need to break the code is to know that “white” = “assimilated”. Asians tend… Continue reading Acting White