Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
One of the standard paradigms of modern Western culture is that the Middle Ages were a dark, primitive time. While that’s true for the era between Rome’s fall and about 1,000 A.D., after 1,000 A.D. Europe enjoyed an explosive, intellectually vibrant time. (To understand the groundwork for this intellectual explosion,
Continue readingAccording to the much sneered at, and much feared, Mayan Apocalypse, tomorrow marks the end of the world. I’m inclined to believe this is true. I don’t, however, expect the earth to explode into a giant ball of cosmic dust or some plague rivaling the Black Death. What I do
Continue readingMy father, alev ha-shalom, had forgotten more about English — his third language — than most people will ever know. In addition to reading novels and non-fiction for pleasure, he would amuse himself reading dictionaries, grammar books, and stories about the English language. (In that last genre, my favorite was one
Continue readingI’m finding some wonderful gems hidden in my inbox. This one goes back to April, but is too good not to share now. It’s a news story about the way in which the Swedish cultural elite — including the Minister of Culture — celebrate. Here’s a hint about what you’ll
Continue readingYesterday, I wrote that, given the Arab propensity for warfare, it doesn’t seem as if peace in the Middle East is likely any time soon. Today, I looked over a post I wrote last summer while in Greece, and concluded that Germany would be foolish to throw good German money
Continue readingYesterday, I wrote about European fairy tales versus American fairy tales. Of the former, I said: That’s the theme in the majority of fairy tales that originated in the old world: be good, be passive, and some deus ex machina figure, usually magical, will come and rescue you. Passivity is
Continue readingAmericans, especially Leftist Americans, will invariably assure you that Europeans are more civilized than Americans are. When pressed for details, they’ll cite art, music, architecture, skinny French women, and gun control. By those standards, I have to agree that the Europeans are indeed more civilized. I’ll go even further: when
Continue readingThis article that just appeared in Bloomberg.com, regarding Stockton-writ-California-writ-USA-writ-large’s pending bankruptcy, is just so absolutely jaw-dropping crazy…uh, no, wait….it isn’t really so crazy after all. Never mind. If Stockton Is Broke, Why Isn’t San Diego?: Steven Greenhut http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-02/if-stockton-is-broke-then-why-isn-t-san-diego-steven-greenhut.html Here’s the money take-away: referencing the fact that, for the past 20
Continue readingFor years at this blog (and others) when we’ve written about Europe’s problems, we’ve focused primarily, not on the economy, but on those Muslim immigrants. One of the things that we talked about a lot was the fact that these same Muslim immigrants subsisted largely on public benefits. This little
Continue readingA few years ago, those in the know were telling us in no uncertain terms that the EU model was the future — and that America had better get used to playing second fiddle to the economic giant that a united Europe presented. I found it hard to imagine that
Continue readingI noted when I was in London that the City was filled with obvious Muslims (by which I mean burqa-ed and hijab-ed women, and their male escorts). London, though, still felt like a modern western city. Not so other cities in Europe. Andrew McCarthy explains why, and warns us that
Continue readingWe have hundreds of pictures of beautiful views, art work, and historic sites. They are fairly generic, though, so I won’t bother sharing them here. If you go to Flickr and type in Tower of London, for example, you’ll see exactly the same photos. There were some things, though, that
Continue readingHaving done a flying visit through the Mediterranean, I’m scarcely in any position to make far reaching comments about the towns or countries I visited. Nevertheless, I do feel competent to offer two very specific comments, one about Greece and one about Italy. Throughout our visit to Greece, there was
Continue readingIsrael as the next Saudia Arabia? According to this article in the Wall Street Journal, Israel’s unusually large and high-quality shale oil reserves may yield as much oil as all of Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576242420737584278.html These discoveries are in addition to of Israel’s recently diclosed gas
Continue readingOne of my all-time favorite economic historians is Harvard’s Niall Ferguson, who does a very good job dissecting the transatlantic political and economic cultures with characteristic British clarity in erudition. He’s not perfect, however: witness his bad judgment in affixing his name to a worn-out political rag like Newsweek. But, I
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