About 20 years ago, I wrote a piece for NR arguing that The Simpsons--already TV's longest running sitcom!--constituted a victory for the right in the culture. It wasn't that the show was conservative, but that it aimed at all of the "false pieties" of the culture:What should dismay liberals about this is that so many of today's pieties are constructs of the Left. Conservatives are accustomed to being mocked constantly in the popular culture. But the experience must come as something of a shock for hothouse liberals. For example, Homer Simpson's mother is a '60s radical still on the lam. How did she dodge the feds? "I had help from my friends in the underground. Jerry Rubin gave me a job marketing his line of health shakes. I proofread Bobby Seale's cookbook. And I ran credit checks at Tom Hayden's Porsche dealership." Some important pretensions are being punctured here--but not the usual ones.Around the same time, Andrew Sullivan and Brian Anderson were making the case that South Park represented the same dynamic. Sullivan called it "the best antidote to PC culture we have." Anderson noted that "Lots of cable comedy, while not traditionally conservative, is fiercely anti-liberal, which as a practical matter often amounts nearly to the same thing." He quotes Matt Stone, South Park's co-creator: "I hate conservatives, but I really f**king hate liberals."What fascinates me is the way that, in the years since, the enforcers of political correctness, perhaps not entirely consciously, recognized the threat of anti-PC humor and cracked down on it. This is exactly what Joseph Schumpeter, borrowing from Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, would have predicted. What Schumpeter called the New Class of intellectuals (and what Nietzsche called the priestly class) undermine virtues that don't benefit them by turning them into vices. For Nietzsche, Christianity overturned the old virtues of pride, bravery, and strength and turned them into vices, elevating humility and meekness. For Schumpeter, the new intellectual classes turned industry and entrepreneurialism into rapaciousness and greed.Even if you don't buy all that, it is remarkable how angry the wokesters are at Dave Chapelle and co. I think it stems from the fact that, even though they prudishly want to police comedy, they don't want to give up on the vital myth that to be left-wing is to be rebellious. The problem is they can't have it both ways. They can't control the commanding the heights of the culture and also claim to be the cultural subversives and rebels.
When George Orwell returned to Barcelona for the third time, on June 20th, 1937, he discovered that the Spanish secret police were after him. He had been forced to return to the front in order to have his discharge papers countersigned and, in his absence, the Communists had initiated a purge of their perceived enemies. Orwell was on the list. As he arrived in the lobby of the Hotel Continental, Eileen approached him calmly, placed her arm around his neck, and smiled for the benefit of anyone watching. Once they were close enough she hissed in his ear:"Get out!""What?""Get out at once.""What?""Don't keep standing here! You must get outside quickly!"Eileen guided a bewildered Orwell toward the hotel exit. Marceau Pivert, a French friend of Orwell's who was just entering the lobby, seemed distressed to see him and told him he needed to hide before the hotel called the police. A sympathetic member of the staff joined in, urging Orwell to leave in his broken English. Eileen managed to get him to a café on a discreet side street, where she explained the seriousness of the situation.*David Crook, a young Englishman working for the Independent Labour Party's (ILP) Barcelona office, had become friends with both Orwell and his wife over the last few months. He was not what he seemed. He had arrived in Spain in January 1937, the month after Orwell, eager to join up with the International Brigades and fight the Fascists. He was descended from Russian-Jewish immigrants and grew up in Hampstead, attending the prestigious Cheltenham College.Like many young men who grew up after the First World War, he was attracted to left-wing causes. He moved to New York City, where he attended Columbia University and embraced radical politics, joining the Young Communist League. As a student delegate he traveled down to Kentucky to support the famous miners' strike in Harlan County, witnessing its brutal suppression by the National Guard. On his return to London he became a member of the British Communist Party. At one meeting, the doomed poet John Cornford spoke about the Republican cause in Spain, and Crook was inspired to enlist.Like Hyndman, Crook was thrust straight into the action at the Battle of Jarama, taking three bullets to the leg. Recovering in Madrid, he socialized with the literary set, including the brilliant war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, her lover Ernest Hemingway, Mulk Raj Anand, and Spender. At this point he came to the attention of Soviet intelligence agents. After recruiting him, the NKVD sent him to a training camp in Albacete, where he was given a crash course in sabotage and surveillance techniques.There he became a Communist spy. Crook's mission was to infiltrate the ILP and report on all their activities. The Soviets already had one agent in place, David Wickes, who volunteered as an interpreter with the ILP and passed what information he found on to his handlers. Now Crook was to infiltrate deeper and get hold of documents. Orwell was his most prestigious target.
One of the twentieth century's greatest writers, Hans Fallada, died of heart failure in 1947. Fallada struggled with substance abuse, and after suffering a heart attack during the early winter of that year, was confined to a sanatorium where he spent his days with family and waiting for the publication of Every Man Dies Alone, his masterwork about a German couple who defy the sanctions and intimidation of the Nazis by circulating postcards of dissent in various areas of Berlin during World War II.Every Man is as much a story about love as resistance; a testament to a middle age married couple's determination and character and the courage to pursue integrity and freedom despite facing risks of unfathomable terror. Fallada wrote the novel in what he described as a twenty-four day period of "white heat." Sadly, he would not live to see its publication--he died weeks before the book's release.Melville House is proud to say we've published Fallada's most important books, including Little Man, What Now?, Wolf Among Wolves, The Drinker; and Every Man Dies Alone.
"With a BFF in the #B_Team -- who empties US coffers and takes US foreign policy hostage -- SPYING on the US PRESIDENT, America doesn't need enemies," Zarif wrote, alongside screenshots of the report.Zarif on Twitter often refers to the "#B_Team," which includes former US national security adviser John Bolton, who left the post Tuesday, Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, all hawks on Iran.
Deborah Ramirez had the grades to go to Yale in 1983. But she wasn't prepared for what she'd find there.A top student in southwestern Connecticut, she studied hard but socialized little. She was raised Catholic and had a sheltered upbringing. In the summers, she worked at Carvel dishing ice cream, commuting in the $500 car she'd bought with babysitting earnings.At Yale, she encountered students from more worldly backgrounds. Many were affluent and had attended elite private high schools. They also had experience with drinking and sexual behavior that Ms. Ramirez -- who had not intended to be intimate with a man until her wedding night -- lacked.During the winter of her freshman year, a drunken dormitory party unsettled her deeply. She and some classmates had been drinking heavily when, she says, a freshman named Brett Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her, prompting her to swat it away and inadvertently touch it. Some of the onlookers, who had been passing around a fake penis earlier in the evening, laughed.To Ms. Ramirez it wasn't funny at all. It was the nadir of her first year, when she often felt insufficiently rich, experienced or savvy to mingle with her more privileged classmates."I had gone through high school, I'm the good girl, and now, in one evening, it was all ripped away," she said in an interview earlier this year at her Boulder, Colo., home. By preying upon her in this way, she added, Mr. Kavanaugh and his friends "make it clear I'm not smart."Mr. Kavanaugh, now a justice on the Supreme Court, has adamantly denied her claims. Those claims became a flash point...
"Tehran is behind nearly 100 attacks on Saudi Arabia while Rouhani and Zarif pretend to engage in diplomacy," Pompeo said in a Twitter post, referring to Iran's president and foreign minister.
Former Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Friday said he would launch a "new political movement" in the latest challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from his former allies.Davutoglu was the prime minister and chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) between 2014 and 2016 until relations soured with Erdogan and he was forced out.
When you sort a list of players in Major League Baseball history alphabetically by first name, this is the full list of all the players between Simon Pond and Sol Carter.
— Grant Brisbee (@GrantBrisbee) September 14, 2019
It is not a doctored list. It is, however, an important list. pic.twitter.com/zl6fX2Ipku
The founder of the Sikh tradition, Guru Nanak, was born in 1469 in the Punjab region of South Asia, which is currently split between Pakistan and the northwestern area of India. A majority of the global Sikh population still resides in Punjab on the Indian side of the border.From a young age, Guru Nanak was disillusioned by the social inequities and religious hypocrisies he observed around him. He believed that a single divine force created the entire world and resided within it. In his belief, God was not separate from the world and watching from a distance, but fully present in every aspect of creation.He therefore asserted that all people are equally divine and deserve to be treated as such.To promote this vision of divine oneness and social equality, Guru Nanak created institutions and religious practices. He established community centers and places of worship, wrote his own scriptural compositions and institutionalized a system of leadership (gurus) that would carry forward his vision.The Sikh view thus rejects all social distinctions that produce inequities, including gender, race, religion and caste, the predominant structure for social hierarchy in South Asia.In the Sikh tradition, a truly religious person is one who cultivates the spiritual self while also serving the communities around them - or a saint-soldier. The saint-soldier ideal applies to women and men alike.In this spirit, Sikh women and men maintain five articles of faith, popularly known as the five Ks. These are: kes (long, uncut hair), kara (steel bracelet), kanga (wooden comb), kirpan (small sword) and kachera (soldier-shorts).Although little historical evidence exists to explain why these particular articles were chosen, the five Ks continue provide the community with a collective identity, binding together individuals on the basis of a shared belief and practice.
When even the whackjobs have given up any hope there was anything illegal... "violated protocol," sublime.The IG report on potential FISA abuse is complete. Now being reviewed. Huge.
— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) September 14, 2019
Documents we've seen leave little to zero doubt the FBI and DOJ violated protocol with the effect of targeting Trump. We'll see what the IG found.
Hopefully we're weeks away from getting the truth.
Saudi Arabia's oil production and exports have been disrupted, said three sources familiar with the matter, after drone attacks on two Aramco plants on Saturday, including the world's biggest oil processing facility.
AEI adjunct fellow Lyman Stone returns to the Remnant, and to America, to discuss family formation, fertility, climate change, and more.
United Auto Workers President Gary Jones is an unnamed union official accused in a federal criminal case Thursday of helping orchestrate a years-long conspiracy that involved embezzling member dues and spending the money on personal luxuries, three sources told The Detroit News.In the criminal case, federal authorities identified four current and former senior officials as complicit in the embezzlement scheme. The government did not use their names but used labels to identify the union leaders, including "UAW Official A" and "UAW Official B," and detailed numerous instances of misspending on golf, golf equipment, cigars, months-long rentals at private villas and falsified expense reports.Multiple sources told The News that "UAW Official A" is Jones and "UAW Official B" is former President Dennis Williams. The sources spoke only on the condition that they were not publicly identified because they are not authorized to speak about the investigation.In outlining its case, federal officials provided the most detailed accounting to date of how Jones' former aide, UAW Region 5 Director Vance Pearson, and the unnamed union officials defrauded the union by using fraudulent expense reports for items during prolonged stays in luxury Palm Springs villas. Those visits lasted days, weeks and even months beyond the union's official business purpose for being in the desert oasis.Pearson made an initial appearance in a Missouri federal court Thursday to face charges that include embezzling union funds, mail and wire fraud and money laundering.The criminal case outlined a pattern of corruption stretching from California to Detroit and illegal spending by union leaders who spent more than $1 million of member dues on Palm Springs villas, steakhouse dinners, 107 rounds of golf, golf gear, cigars and $400 bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne.
There are fewer slaves in the world today, per capita, than at any other point in history. Chattel slavery, the kind that lead to the Atlantic slave trade, was once a human universal. Today, it is abolished and morally condemned. Other forms of slavery, such as child labor and forced marriage, are in decline. And the United Nations has set a target to end modern slavery by 2025.We are closer to ending this morally bankrupt practice than at any point in our history. Will the final push come in the form of robotic automation?A map showing the estimated prevalence of modern slavery (per 1,000 people) according to the Global Slavery Index's 2018 findings. The 10 countries with the highest prevalence are noted.The idea is simple enough. Slavery is an economic crime. Its perpetrators lure desperate and disenfranchised peoples with the promise of a livelihood. They then force their victims to do repetitive, physically demanding, and often dangerous work while cutting them off from any physical, social, and lawful means of escape.By design, machines perform repetitive tasks without concerns for the dangers or physical demands. In richer countries, they are already employed in industries associated with chattel slavery abroad, such as mining, farming, and textiles. As the thinking goes: if automation were to become widespread and cost effective enough, it would eradicate the need for cheap human labor and render slavery economically inefficient.
[T]he Exorcist is a deeply religious novel in which Catholic priests play the most heroic roles, martyring themselves to save the life of a little girl who isn't even Catholic. (In 2011, the publisher brought out a 40th anniversary edition that had been lightly revised by Blatty to, among other things, make it more Catholic-friendly; if you plan to read The Exorcist, I recommend finding the original.) And, although the book is a cautionary tale about the harm that divorce can do to children, it is not a call for an end to all divorce, nor is it an argument against women in the workplace.Although the demon inside of Regan accuses Chris of bringing about the divorce by putting her career ahead of her marriage, Blatty indicates that this isn't the case. He portrays Chris as a loving mother and wife, who still hopes to reconcile with her husband. The divorce is clearly the result of Howard's fragile ego and his inability to handle his wife's success. Just before they begin the exorcism, Father Merrin reminds Father Karras not to speak with the demon, warning him, "Especially, do not listen to anything he says. The demon is a liar."Nevertheless, it is Merrin who makes the clearest plea for Americans to reconsider the idea of ending their troubled marriages. When asked by Damien Karras what the reason for demonic possession is, Father Merrin replies:"I think the demon's target is not the possessed; it is us...the observers...every person in this house. And I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity...to see ourselves as ultimately bestial...without dignity; ugly; unworthy. And there lies the heart of it perhaps...For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it is finally a matter of love; of accepting the possibility that God could love us. He knows...the demon knows where to strike...Long ago I despaired of ever loving my neighbor. Certain people...repelled me. How could I love them? I thought. It tormented me...How many husbands and wives must believe they have fallen out of love because their hearts no longer race at the sight of their beloveds? Ah, dear God! There it lies, I think, Damien...possession; not in wars, as some tend to believe; not so much; and very seldom in extraordinary interventions...such as here...this girl...this poor child. No, I see it most often in the little things Damien: in the senseless petty spites; the misunderstandings; the cruel and cutting word that leaps unbidden to the tongue between friends. Between lovers. Enough of these."The Exorcist was written at a troubled time for author and country--a counter-countercultural parable by a writer uneasy with the effects of rapid liberalization on the family unit. It is perhaps unsurprising that contemporary critics overlooked Blatty's culturally unfashionable social conservatism. But, as Mary Eberstadt's sobering new assessment of the sexual revolution's legacy reminds us, his cautionary tale has aged well.
The nation's top intelligence official is illegally withholding a whistleblower complaint, possibly to protect President Donald Trump or senior White House officials, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff alleged Friday.Schiff issued a subpoena for the complaint, accusing acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire of taking extraordinary steps to withhold the complaint from Congress, even after the intel community's inspector general characterized the complaint as credible and of "urgent concern.""A Director of National Intelligence has never prevented a properly submitted whistleblower complaint that the [inspector general] determined to be credible and urgent from being provided to the congressional intelligence committees. Never," Schiff said in a statement. "This raises serious concerns about whether White House, Department of Justice or other executive branch officials are trying to prevent a legitimate whistleblower complaint from reaching its intended recipient, the Congress, in order to cover up serious misconduct."
A @rachaelmbade @thamburger scoop: House Judiciary negotiating with *Jeff Sessions* for his testimony https://t.co/b3N4KHGJPj
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) September 13, 2019