Every human society has had its share of offensive or annoying people: busybodies and bores, poseurs and bullies, cheapskates and check-grabbers, hypocrites and egomaniacs. You might even be able to define some societies by the offensive characters they tend to produce or by the qualities they find most offensive.
Virginia! Oh Virginia! How far thou have fallen and are desecrated!
That is how I felt as I watched Southerners celebrating the election results in Virginia. Has the state that produced Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson gone so far under the spell of multiculturalism that Virginians can fall for politicians who attack Southern traditions and Southern monuments.
I am not writing this on pagan Lemuria or on what to the Catholics in Italy is Ognisanti, in other words, on All Saints’ Day, but apparently on what is now a Russian state holiday called Bailiffs’ Day.
Stephen has talked me into another pop culture series, this one on Western movies. Each of us will pick perhaps 6 movies to discuss, alternating classics chosen by me and post-1960 junk chosen by Stephen “the kid” Heiner. My entirely objective and non-judgmental language here anticipates the tenor of the discussion. The question for me, and perhaps also for Stephen, is: Which movies to pick?
The U. S. generals are huffing and puffing over Taiwan, making sure the defense companies they soon will be consulting with for millions of dollars get new billion-dollar contracts.
This letter, from Alexander Pope to Francis Atterbury, Anglican Bishop of Rochester, is a coherent and dignified explanation of the poet’s determination to remain a Catholic, despite the renewed persecution of Catholics that took place following the Hanoverian succession. It breathes an air of sweet reason and political sanity that is desperately needed by Americans today, left and right, who seem to plunge into fanaticism on the slightest pretext.
We who have the misfortune of living in Adam Kingizger’s congressional district were delighted to read that this great and virtuous war hero does not have the courage to run for reelection.
Burn’s colorful description of traditional Halloween customs conveys both the eeriness and the wholesomeness of Scottish Halloweens.
I’ve been on many a television or movie set in studios and on location and can say from my experience that when guns are present the prop master, armorer, directors, and actors are on high alert.
