A collection of 209 posts
The intermingling of elements—culture, language, religion—is celebrated, while the concept of purity in identity and culture is repudiated as too constricting.
Like almost every other communist before him, Bastani wants to reach communism via socialism. Thus, the fact that socialism has already been tried more than two dozen times, and failed every time without exception, should be somewhat relevant to this book.
Antifa movements have sprung up in a variety of countries, often opposing Nazis and Nazi sympathizers while also promoting general far-left politics of the Marxist and communist variety.
Pessimism is not just factually wrong, it is also harmful because it undermines our confidence in our ability to bring about further progress.
The motif of the marketplace of ideas, Stanley argues, only works with descriptive speech.
As global violence against women gained horrendous momentum, many Western feminists became increasingly afraid to criticize that violence lest they be condemned as colonialists and racists.
Dr Phyllis Chesler has never been afraid to be unpopular.
Lately, the very serious people who write about TV and film and books for publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Times have been tripping over themselves to heap praise on highbrow novelists, filmmakers, and screenwriters who have used their platforms to tackle issues such as rape
We are natural conformers because, more often than not, it keeps us alive and in good standing with our peers.
The sordid and shameful history of eugenics in the U.S. should be better known, as should the role of another prominent American institution that was central to the development of eugenics ideology.
Nineteen-Eighty Four, whose first publication took place 70 years ago today, is itself a sort of anti-novel, one that undermines its own dramatic tension in a way that might now be described as postmodern.
On May 17th, American novelist Herman Wouk died, just ten days before he was due to turn 104. If Ernest Hemingway’s life and career had been as long as those of Herman Wouk, he’d have been alive as recently as 2003 and he’d have published a book
An even moderately careful reading of Lolita should make it quite clear that it’s anything but a “celebration” of child rape.
If sensitivity readers become a publishing institution, they will only incentivize more cautious, conservative, and ideologically homogenous books.
Not only is no-one allowed to change for the better anymore, no one is even allowed to be understood, much less forgiven.