Peggy Noonan has written a very provocative piece entitled “The Old New York Won’t Come Back”, in which she contemplates the very realistic notion that, after one year, the pandemic has shaped a fundamental transformation of what we can consider “normal”.  And I don’t mean anything like the flippancy of the term “new normal”; I […]

As President-Elect Joe Biden builds his core leadership group with cabinet and sub-cabinet appointments, it is still unclear exactly what his top policy priorities will be, beyond removing as much of the Trump legacy as possible.  After all, we saw very little of him during the campaign, particularly when it might involve probing questions from […]

Over the past several months I hope that I have made it clear that I believe the only solution to our cultural crisis is for the liberal establishment and the institutions that they dominate to take a leadership role in addressing the contradictions and false narratives that plague our social discourse.  This should start with […]

In July I noted that what The Wall Street Journal had described as our “Jacobin moment” cannot be stopped by an accord between the far left and traditional conservatism, because traditionalists no longer have a seat at the table.  The mobs in the street and their fellow travelers are not about to listen to them […]

Two essays really struck me over the past week.  One was by Daniel Schwammenthal, director of the AJC Transatlantic Institute, writing from Brussels as “a worried European friend”.  His concern is that America’s future leaders in our universities have been spoon-fed two theories born of Marxism, postmodernism and critical theory, which in combination divide society […]

The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal has described this current period of social unrest America’s “Jacobin moment” because it has the fervor and indiscriminate judgment of the revolutionary mind.  The guillotine isn’t as yet in use, but the impulse is the same–to destroy careers, livelihoods, and reputations.  And lately, the mob’s emphasis is […]

As an alumnus of The University of Texas at Austin, I have taken particular interest in the recent demands made of the administration by elements of the athletic department, primarily the football team that has marched on the state capitol and conducted various press conferences and social media rants.  The demands are of the usual […]

The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society.  The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.—Daniel Patrick Moynihan I have referred to the quote above many times over the years because I think it is profound on […]

The clash over removal of Confederate images in Charlottesville, Virginia in August and Donald Trump’s failure to specifically call out the white nationalists as the lead culprit in the melee have continued to reverberate and, as the Wall Street Journal has noted, it is unfortunate that most of the attention was focused on the deficiencies […]