Are there words or phrases that you get so tired of hearing that they almost make you ill?  How about “awesome”?  Or “no problem”, when a simple “you’re welcome” would do nicely?  Both of these have become obnoxious to me.  But these are benign and  merely irritating.  A different problem is the word for the […]

The Texas State Board of Education voted last month to approve a modified rule that will advance the development of public school course offerings in Mexican-American Studies.  This is a mistake.  We already have far too much curriculum content focused on cultural “studies” in our higher education institutions.  In fact, based on a 2012 study […]

  In viewing the reporting of the response to and recovery from the devastation wreaked by the tornadoes in Oklahoma, I have been struck by the contrast in the local response to this disaster with that of the 2005 Katrina hurricane and flood in New Orleans.  Where is the massive evacuation of refugees, the housing […]

In its February 2013 edition, First Things magazine reports on the results of a three-year investigation conducted by the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.  The study breaks down family cultures into four categories: the Faithful, the Engaged Progressives, the Detached, and the American Dreamers.  The latter two categories pretty much accept […]

Maybe it wasn’t the politically adept thing to say at the time and place, but Mitt Romney won some points with me and no doubt others in his truthful remarks on his trip abroad about the comparative cultures of Israel and Palestine and what this means in terms of the welfare of their respective people.  […]

Many of you probably watched the recent CBS 60 Minutes segment on the Texas ranchers who have saved a number of species of African exotic wildlife by bringing them to Texas and providing incentives for their propagation by marketing their harvest as hunting trophies.  The populations have now reached the extent of over a quarter […]

David Brooks thinks that this election is about averting national decline.  No argument there, but he further thinks that President Obama is abandoning the larger issues to the Republicans, which I wish was the case, but I don’t see the evidence.  They are alarmed for sure, but except for Gingrich, I don’t see the large […]

In November I closed by indicating that I would follow up with some thoughts about our cultural trend in the direction of Europe and on how difficult our choices will be in diverting ourselves from this disastrous path.  Over the holidays I revisited a 1995 collection of essays edited by Digby Anderson for National Review […]

Europeans today prefer leisure to performance, security to risk-taking, paternalism to free markets, collectivism and group entitlements to individualism………….Economic freedom has a very low priority here.—Vaclav Klaus, President, Czech Republic In this excerpt from a speech delivered last June in Berlin, President Klaus has pretty succinctly summed up the most critical of many problems facing […]