I have a reasonably high tolerance for uncomfortable television and movies, maybe a higher tolerance than I should, but the first thing I would say about the HBO Max series The Anarchists is that it is not for the faint of heart. Continue Reading...
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September 26, 2022
The Inflation Reduction Act Won’t Reduce Inflation
President Biden has signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), his attempt at delivering on his campaign promises of new investments to combat climate change, improve healthcare, and impose “fair” corporate taxes. Continue Reading...
September 22, 2022
USC Squanders an Opportunity to Form Fraternities
Eight fraternities recently disaffiliated from the University of Southern California following the university’s response to allegations of horrible sexual assaults on campus in 2021. During the fall semester of 2021, there were several reports of girls being drugged and sexually assaulted at fraternity events. Continue Reading...
September 21, 2022
Our Lady of the Artilects Makes AI Catholic Cool
The idea of personal identity and sentience in artificial intelligences (AI) is not exactly new territory for the science fiction genre: from Neuromancer to Westworld, writers frequently contemplate the ideas of agency and moral status in close-to-human, artificially engineered agents and environments. Continue Reading...
September 20, 2022
Progressives Remember COVID but Refuse to Learn from It
There are three ways to look back at the first year of the COVID pandemic. The first is to learn from the whole experience. Recall the fear, pain, and misery brought on by lockdowns, mask mandates, and social distancing, as well as the deaths that could have been prevented but weren’t because of politics (think the nursing home debacles). Continue Reading...
September 16, 2022
Free Enterprise Is Saving African Lives
For years, Africa has dominated the podium in the “bad healthcare” Olympics. For reference, the average cost for an established patient and Medicare recipient to make one visit to a family practice in Pennsylvania (where I live) is approximately $88—the cost of less than a week’s worth of groceries. Continue Reading...
September 15, 2022
The Manchurian Candidate Is a Neglected Masterpiece
In 1959, when Richard Condon published his political thriller The Manchurian Candidate, he took a topical idea and ran amok with it. The idea was that during the Korean War a platoon of GIs had been captured by the Chinese, brainwashed (“not just washed, but dry-cleaned”), and released back home to do the enemy’s bidding. Continue Reading...
September 14, 2022
North Korea Crushes Its People as Nuclear Capacity Expands
North Korea’s chief notoriety is its nuclear program. Another nuclear test is expected soon. The Rand Corporation and Asan Institute predict that by 2027, the North “could have 200 nuclear weapons and several dozen intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and hundreds of theater missiles for delivering the nuclear weapons.” Continue Reading...
September 13, 2022
Last Summer Boys Points the Way for Conservative Novelists
When Bill Rivers put a copy of his debut novel, Last Summer Boys, in my hand earlier this summer, he didn’t tell me it came with blurbs from former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, for whom he had been a speechwriter, and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia. Continue Reading...
September 09, 2022
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (1926–2022)
The longest reign of any British monarch came to an end on the afternoon of Thursday, September 8, 2022. Queen Elizabeth II died peacefully at Balmoral Castle, her favorite residence, in the northeast of Scotland. Continue Reading...
