Hasn't gone away: But in fact, as people have turned away from the religious framework, they have not jettisoned that interior certitude, that feeling of absolute confidence that used to be associated only with religious doctrine and belief. When people stop believing in God, they quickly find surrogate beliefs, construct surrogate values, and embrace a …
The Imaginary Land of American Foreign Policy
The world's largest democracy has swept Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) into power, and they're trying to figure out what he's going to do to change India: The new composition of parliament is significant, as are a number of other factoids about this election. The BJP has returned at least 279 seats in the …
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Power and Privilege Training at Harvard? Just Pull the Plug!
Those diversity people are at it again, this time at The Place Where Future Presidents go: The administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government has agreed to work with a student group to implement a “mandatory power and privilege training” as part of its orientation, according to several reports by the group. “We have exciting …
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Just Mail Us Our Diplomas and Be Done With It
Getting the boot as a commencement speaker is becoming quite fashionable these days: The head of the International Monetary Fund on Monday joined an élite group—those whose plans to give commencement addresses this graduation season were derailed by student or faculty protests. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, was scheduled to speak this coming …
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Closure for One World War II Tragedy, Hope for Another
In the midst of our family's recent sad event, we found closure on yet another family tragedy that came from World War II. As I noted in my 2011 Fourth of July piece: This year, however, I’ve picked something a little closer to home: the aviation service during World War II of my uncle, Don …
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Getting With the Program: The Lesson of the Brandon Eich Fiasco
When I was growing up, one of my father's favourite expressions to get my brother and I to not stray from the path he set before us was to demand that we "get with the program". The flip side to that was that, if we did get with the program, life would be good. That …
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Crimea, the Place Where the West Goes Nuts
Crimea is back in the news; the Russians have basically taken the place over again and the Ukrainians--along with their friends in the West--aren't sure what to do. There's a lot of bluster out there; comparisons to the Sudetenland and even the Rhineland abound, the Cold War is being reignited by the neocons, etc. Barack …
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Academic Freedom: Nice While It Lasted
But the Ivy Leaguers are hard at work to change that: Yet the liberal obsession with “academic freedom” seems a bit misplaced to me. After all, no one ever has “full freedom” in research and publication. Which research proposals receive funding and what papers are accepted for publication are always contingent on political priorities. The words …
America in Blue Suede Shoes: Obama vs. the Work Ethic
Our strange government is at it again: It began when the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that the interplay of taxes and subsidies in the law “creates a disincentive for people to work.” The report predicted the mix would lead to fewer hours worked, costing the equivalent of nearly 2.5 million jobs. …
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Our Insane "Civilisation": John Kerry and Justin Welby
There are two threads in the news these days that illustrate where our "Western civilisation" (which at this stage is neither) is going. As is usually the case, "God, gays and guns" are at the centre of the problem, but not in the venues they're normally associated with. Let's start with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin …
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