George Orwell once wrote that “contrary to popular belief, the past was not more eventful than the present.” If it seems so, it is only because events that happened years apart are “telescoped together” in hindsight, and because “very few of your memories come to you genuinely virgin.” My generation, having been born on the cusp of what some call [...]
The diversity rationale is among the most pervasive for affirmative action, but is it persuasive?
From an anti-Jackson newspaper, quoted in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America: In all this affair the language of Jackson has been that of a heartless despot, solely occupied with the preservation of his own authority. Ambition is his crime, and it will be his punishment too: intrigue is his native element, and intrigue will confound his tricks, and will deprive him [...]
Sam makes some fair points, but I don’t think Wilkinson was saying that anyone in general can get rich on Wall Street now that Washington is so powerful. What he actually said is a little different: [I]t really isn’t the Citizens United decision that’s about to make Peter Orszag a minor Midas. It’s the vast power of a handful of Washington players, [...]
It was interesting to see this argument for an admissions lottery advanced earnestly; I think I’ve seen a similar example somewhere advanced by critics of luck egalitarianism as a kind of reductio ad absurdum. (“Imagine what the admissions letter would say: Congratulations, you’ve won the lottery…?”) But that makes this project all the more useful to Dylan’s cause, if he can [...]
The Martin Peretz issue, it seems, is not going away. At least, that’s what the Undergraduate Council would like us to believe. Most students and faculty have moved on, for better or worse, and most probably aren’t aware of the UC’s latest legislative achievement: a bill that “fully condemns” the University’s decision to accept donations in Peretz’s honor. But the UC bill deserves our attention, [...]
For what is probably my second favorite takedown of The Huffington Post, after last year’s TNR cover story by Isaac Chotiner. (The Atlantic’s Ray Gustini calls Mayer’s tirade “less than cogent,” but surely his facility with extended metaphor makes up for that.) But now let me say a word in HuffPo’s defense. Unlike Mayer, I believe that a “stripper with reading glasses” is [...]
The Breitbart/Sherrod saga feels like so much political drama. It is a kind of spectacle custom-made for Politico reporters and political junkies — mildly entertaining, for a little while, but signifying virtually nothing in the end. Witness, for instance, some of the ridiculous accusations that have been thrown around in the past two weeks. In the last fortnight: 1) The NAACP called the [...]
Nowhere has the clash between the Tea Party movement and the “GOP establishment” been more apparent than Arizona, where former Rep. J.D. Hayworth has been a constant thorn in McCain’s side (his suddenly shrunken left side, to be precise). For a while, it looked like McCain might get tripped up enough in his clumsy race to the right to put the self-styled Tea Party [...]
Apart from being an excellent excuse to boost web traffic with pictures of bikini-clad women (cf. The Huffington Post), you may not have seen Lebanese journalist Hanin Ghaddar’s very interesting article last week in Foreign Policy comparing American and Lebanese reactions to the Rima Fakih story. In America: Not many people — let along beauty pageant winners — have been accused [...]
Sam, I agree with you that Rand Paul is off base in his remarks about the Civil Rights Act, but I have a few quibbles about the way you make your argument. (I see that when you aren’t going after Ayn, you are going after Rand with equal intensity. Young libertarians seem to love the Rands as much as young collectivists seem to despise them!) Now I [...]
Andrew Breitbart's May 2010 defense of the Tea Party in an exclusive interview with the HPR
I wrote this weekend that the contest was in poor taste, and that it was likely to attract extremely offensive submissions, but this seems to have surprised many of the people who publicized May 20 as “Draw Muhammad!” Day to begin with. LA Times reports: In declaring May 20th to be “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” Seattle artist Molly Norris created a [...]
In response to the South Park / Muhammad controversy, several bloggers with a libertarian bent have been pushing the idea of a “Draw Muhammad!” contest to retaliate against the New York-based Islamic extremist group Revolution Muslim. The idea originated with noted sex columnist Dan Savage, who has advertised it as a way to retaliate against Revolution Muslim’s “veiled threats” and “water down [...]
