The Literature of Plagues, I: The Plagues of Egypt
This is a story that requires no retelling. Anyone who is not very familiar with the account in Exodus (basically chapters 5-12) will at least have seen the Cecil B. De Mille movie.
Category: Feature
Ten Good Things to Come from the Virus Crisis
When Prohibition was imposed in America in the 1920s, G.K. Chesterton, himself a famous bibber, quipped it was a good thing because it would bring families together to make beer and wine at home. My late father, born in 1917, remembered helping his father make wine in their basement in Detroit. I don’t want to downplay whatever is overtaking America, medically and economically, from the coronavirus. I recently got a takeout burger at a restaurant in Costa Mesa. The manager said the day before he had to personally call 60 employees to “terminate” them, an unfortunate but necessary technical term...
Heroes and Villians: Julius Caesar, Part Two
In which one of history’s greatest men is viewed from the perspective of his enemies.
The Breaking of Nations, Part II: A Look Back at the 1990’s
Then let us look back together at the last decade of the rotten old Millennium, a thousand years of treason against human equality. It was an age of white male villains who subjugated women, tortured the differently gendered, enslaved Africans, murdered and raped the peaceful followers of Mohammed, vilified and plundered the harmless Mongols who, in search of peace and prosperity, tried to make their way into Europe.
The Breaking of Nations, Part One: Preface
Once or twice a decade in the mass media—news mass-produced for the masses of consumers by the masses in the press—stories about secession movements flare up like a cheap match and then burn out. Most recently, we have heard about disgruntled people in the Pacific Northwest who want to break away from their masters in Seattle, Portland, and Sacramento and join with the sturdy yeoman of Idaho. How little they know! Washington today is Colorado yesterday, California the week before—and Idaho tomorrow. The progressive virus is not a paper tiger put together out of newsprint and television images: It is...
Crooked DNC Cheats Tulsi – Again
It isn’t only Crooked Hillary, but the Crooked Democratic National Committee. Once again they cheated Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of her rightful place in the debates. Earlier, they changed the rules so Michael Bloomberg could enter the debates even though he didn’t have any donors except himself. They just changed the rules again. “Under the new requirements, candidates must have at least 20% of the total number of pledged delegates, a requirement only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have met,” reported CBS News. “The previous rules only required candidates to secure one delegate, which Gabbard did in American Samoa.” CNN then...
Schumer Flacks the Court
Schumer and his cronies, like leftist Democrats since the New Deal, have used the Court, whenever they could, to strengthen the power of the central government, but, whenever the Supreme Court has been perceived as an obstacle to their plans to concert power in their own hands, they are tempted to threaten the Court.
Bloomberg’s California Utopia
As the “Mike Will Get It Done” campaign smashes on the shoals of Super Tuesday, especially California, it’s worth looking at what blowing $500 million didn’t achieve. First, Bloomberg said, “California can serve as a great example for the rest of this country.” Maybe if you’re a billionaire who can fly above the Pyrite State in helicopters and private jets between exclusive homes, hotels and office buildings. While dining on the world’s finest cuisine – at least in restaurants that haven’t closed from the state’s insanity of adopting just the policies, such as a $15 minimum wage, Bloomie and the...
Bernie and Dialectical Materialism
Propelled by his victory in Saturday’s Nevada Caucuses and previous combats, Bernie Sanders looks to be the Democrats’ nominee in 2020. He presents himself as a “progressive” bringing us the wave of the future, “democratic socialism.” His slogan: “Not me. Us” (emphasis in original). But when I hear him talk, I hear the Marxists I used to debate in the 1970s at the University of Michigan. Listen for when he screams against “the billionaire class,” as he did in the Eighth Debate from New Hampshire: “The way you bring people together is by presenting an agenda that works for the...
Wednesday’s Child: Letter from Messina
To one who has never visited it before, Messina comes as a shock. Even if the visitor comes from elsewhere on the same island – Palermo is about three hours away by car or by train – the shock is seismic, and yet it is exceedingly difficult to analyze or to describe. Perhaps it is the air, which, unaccountably, reminds one of the Italian Alps, so crystalline it is, as though suffused by vernal sunlight reflecting off freshly fallen snow. Locals say the clarity of the air is due to peculiar currents of wind and water in the Strait, where...
