“Freedom of speech” has been a slogan in America and the Western World for some time. But how to explain the rise of “political correctness,” which has not much affected our civil law, but has affected policies on campus, and, […]
Howard Ahmanson
Our Adventure in Ethiopia
In March of 2015, our family and some friends took a 3½ week trip through Ethiopia, one of the most unusual of sub-Saharan African countries. Ethiopia is exceptional in two ways; It became a Christian culture in the 300s, whereas […]
Before Generalizing about American Culture, Travel a Bit
David Bosworth, author of the new The Demise of Virtue in Virtual America: The Moral Origins of the Great Recession, writes about the effect of constant cyberspace and television on the American character. But is there anything distinctly American about […]
Surveying Marriage vs. Cohabitation: Not a Binary Choice Any More
I have been following the Institute for American Values, led by David Blankenhorn, and the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, led by W. Bradford Wilcox. They have been working, among other things, on the fortunes of children born […]
LARCS, Abstinence, and Other Matters of Education
I have read Isabel Sawhill’s new book, Generation Unbound. In this, she tells us that she would encourage young people to be ‘planners’ rather than ‘drifters’ when it comes to relationships, marriage, and child bearing. [Among other implications of this, […]
Which Taxes to Raise – A Revision
In earlier posts I suggested that the top bracket income tax could be raised to up to 40%, as in the Clinton era, without hurting government revenues or damaging the economy. It still might not, but I have decided that […]
The Upper Middle Class Versus the 1%?
Matt Miller, Californian commentator, comments in his book The Tyranny of Dead Ideas that it probably will be the upper middle class, or ‘lower upper’ as he calls it, that will lead the opposition to the so called 1%, and […]
“Shared Intentionality” and its Implications
The ‘developmental and comparative psychologist’ Michael Tomasello, an American who now works at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, has come up with a concept called “shared intentionality” as a mark that separates humans from chimpanzees and bonobos [asserted in […]
C.S. Lewis and the World of Modern Technology
C.S. Lewis, in his important apologetic work The Problem of Pain, tried to envision an alternative pain-free universe [Chapter 2]: The permanent nature of wood which enables us to use it as a beam also enables us to use it […]
So-Called “Bro-Country” is a New Thing, and an Old Thing
I spent a few days in Jackson, Mississippi, last fall, and for the interest of the thing had a country music station on in my car, because you never know. It turned out a large number of the songs were […]