Irony of ironies, all is irony
In the last sentence of my PJ essay I mentioned that this campaign contains many ironies. What might they be?
Continue reading →Category Archives: Getting philosophical: life, love, the universe
Three ancient tales of unwed pregnancies
I grew up in an era in which abortion was both difficult to obtain and physically dangerous. Today’s commonplace alternative of raising the child as an unwed single mother was socially unacceptable in the extreme. Effective birth control was nowhere … Continue reading →
Father’s Day: prose and poetry
Tim Russert died two days ago, and he’s been mourned and eulogized by many since then. Quite a few of the tributes have made glowing mention of two books he’d written, both on the theme of fatherhood. The first, Big … Continue reading →
Happy Mother’s Day: mothers and babies
Okay, who are these three dark beauties?
Continue reading →Blood on the track: the bell tolls for Eight Belles
I’ve never been especially interested in horses, and I almost never watch horse races. One exception was the 1975 match race between the unbeaten filly Ruffian and that year’s Derby winner Foolish Pleasure. As we watched, Ruffian broke down towards … Continue reading →
Not for the elevator-phobic
A primer in how not to apologize (or how to not apologize), by Barack Obama
Ever the eager teacher of Life Lessons for America, Obama obliges us by offering a classic example of the non-apology masquerading as an apology. The rules: (1) Start with a conditional. “If” is usually best. This reduces the “apology” to … Continue reading →
Obama, Hillary, McCain, and courage under fire
I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the main themes of the coming election isn’t just “change.” It’s guts. Why else would Hillary lie about having come under fire in Bosnia? Surely claiming there was physical danger involved in … Continue reading →
You can go home again—at fifty?
It’s not news that in times of economic strife, grownup children often go back to live with their parents, if they’re desperate enough or shameless enough and the parents are kind enough to have them. And since this is a … Continue reading →
Facts, truth, and changing one’s mind
Fred Barnes seems to be channeling neo-neocon in his latest Weekly Standard article. Towards the end of his piece describing Iraq’s recent progress towards reaching those benchmarks we used to hear so much about, Barnes asks some of the same … Continue reading →
Obama: too young at heart
It’s no accident that Obama does well with young voters. There’s something about his rhetoric that especially appeals to the idealism of youth. As Betsy Newmark points out, the young are often “too ignorant of history to realize that change … Continue reading →
Cultural and moral relativism (Part II)
[Part I] Moral relativism is the idea that there is no absolute good and evil, but that all customs and practices of mankind must be evaluated in terms of their function in the society where they are found. Any attempt … Continue reading →