David Leonhardt is in a rare category of writers these days—a center-left moderate progressive at a dominant media outlet (the New York Times) who often upset left-wingers for telling the truth about COVID. Continue Reading...
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January 24, 2024
Truth, Conscience, and the (New) American Way
We live in a culture where many believe that the claims of their emotional lives trump all other considerations. This sentimental understanding of the self is driven by our culture’s obsession with identity, which is often grounded in our “sense of self.” Continue Reading...
January 23, 2024
Religious Canadians Are Hated in Their Own Country
Synagogues and Jewish schools targeted by firebombings and shootings. Muslims attacked outside their mosque. Dozens of churches burned to the ground. Headlines like these over the past few months bear witness to a troubling rise in violence perpetrated against religious communities in Canada. Continue Reading...
January 19, 2024
Vladimir Lenin: Bloodthirsty Superstar
Whenever I read a story involving one of the profusion of holy relics preserved and exhibited over the centuries, whether it be the Shroud of Turin or the finger bone of the fifth-century patroness Saint Genevieve, to this day displayed in a small glass cylinder in the Chapel of St. Continue Reading...
January 18, 2024
Milton Friedman: The Conservative Institution Builder
When tasked with reviewing Jennifer Burns’ Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative, I was unaware that I was going to read one of the most engaging works of intellectual history I have ever encountered. Continue Reading...
January 17, 2024
Inhumane Letters and the Joy of Violence
Babel: Or The Necessity of Violence, An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators Revolution is a pernicious novel showcasing the ability of literature to make evil appear good. Evaluating Babel requires considering the purpose of literature; how can a novel be technically excellent, yet fail to achieve literature’s high calling? Continue Reading...
January 15, 2024
Forty Years of Cross-Racial Bonding
We celebrate the January 15, 1929, birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. on the Monday closest to his birthday every year—and this year that Monday is today, January 15. King’s single most quoted sentence is probably this: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Continue Reading...
January 12, 2024
Saving Entrepreneurship: More Hard Work, Less WeWork
“When you speak to customers, don’t let them know you are the owners.” This was the advice given to my wife and me by the previous owners when we bought a business in 2020. Continue Reading...
January 11, 2024
Over-Regulation Is Strangling Panama—and the U.S.
Beginning in mid-October, Panamanian activists, led by the militant leftist labor union SUNTRACS, brought much of Panama to a standstill, blocking roads and filling Panama City with daily demonstrations against a copper-mining contract with Canadian firm First Quantum. Continue Reading...
January 10, 2024
The Curse of The Iron Claw
Four decades ago, the American director Robert Aldrich made the most cheerful, companionable, and charitable movie ever produced about professional wrestling. Against all expectations, Aldrich—the grand master of the grotesque on the basis of such cartoonishly misanthropic masterpieces as Kiss Me Deadly, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Continue Reading...
