CULTURE
‘Solo’ Taps ‘Star Wars’ Ethos: Fans Can Rejoice Over Ron Howard’s Han Solo Movie
Unlike the abysmal Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Solo Emphasizes Story Telling Over Lefty Propaganda and Special Effects
Self-Made Men (1875)
Fortune may crowd a man’s life with fortunate circumstances and happy opportunities, but they will, as we all know, avail him nothing unless he makes a wise and vigorous use of them.
Considering 2008’s ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, written by Eric Roth (Munich, which was morally repugnant) and directed by David Fincher (Zodiac, which was miserable) is breathtaking and, on purely cinematic grounds, it is a grand three hours, as the tagline says, of life...
Still Haunting The World: Karl Marx and Marxism 200 Years Later
A specter continues to haunt the world, the specter of Karl Marx. Two hundred years ago, on May 5, 1818, the father of twentieth century totalitarian communism, the guidebook writer of revolutionary mass-murdering dictatorship, and the inspirer of disastrous socialist central planning was born in Trier, Germany.
A Not-So Great Society: The Legacy of Lyndon Johnson
The “untouchable” entitlement programs at the heart of the current debt crisis are the outgrowths of the redistributive programs introduced by or greatly expanded during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.
Why ‘Chappaquiddick’ is a Breakthrough
That this movie exists is a cinematic achievement. Whatever my criticism, whatever its flaws, the movie about an American government official’s deliberate, historic conspiracy — a real, proven conspiracy of corruption, deceit and silence, ahem, Oliver Stone — to...
Doing Something About Mass Shootings In Schools
Organizing and signing online petitions against gun manufacturers may be emotionally gratifying but will not end gun violence.
Light ‘Argo’ Dramatizes Escape from Iran
Ben Affleck’s 2012 movie, Argo, reduces the so-called Iran hostage crisis (1979-1981) to an episode of smaller proportions with satisfactory results. This isn’t great cinema, and it leaves a lot of meaning, context and history out of the picture, but the...
What Left-Wing Educators Don’t Teach During ‘Black History Month’
A few historical and inconvenient notes left on the cutting room floor during Black History Month.
What Makes Progress Possible?
Inventing vaccines, restoring eye sight, developing new and more efficient food sources, increasing productivity, reducing poverty, all depend on human ingenuity: our exercising reason to solve problems and to create.
A “Right Side” to History? The Failure of Marx’s Predictions About Capitalism, Part 2
Those who speak about being on the “right side of history” have, knowingly or not, adopted a central element in Karl Marx’s analysis of capitalism
A “Right Side” to History? The Failure of Marx’s Predictions About Capitalism, Part 1
One of the most common phrases to be heard from those on “the left” is the assertion that someone or some public policy is or is not on “the right side of history.”
Roy Moore Is Not Fit For Political Office
Insinuating that he thinks gays deserve to die and stating clearly and explicitly that he aims to enact a religious government disqualify Moore from political office.
Books: The Moral Case for Finance
The essential moral case for finance that Brook and Watkins present is that finance is good by the standard of human flourishing.
Art, Business, and First-Handed Productiveness
It is important to choose work that you enjoy.
Three Things You Did Not Know About Islam
Three things about Islam you didn’t know. For every opinion or belief someone may hold there will be another party who just as strongly oppose that idea. Both sides usually claim to sit with the best arguments, the real facts and the correct worldview, and...
The Inca Elite and the “Communism” of the Common People
The Inca rulers imposed on almost all in society a compulsory equalitarianism in virtually all things.
Interview with Alexander Marriott on Nat Turner
History teacher Alexander Marriott examines facts and fiction about slave rebel Nat Turner in this exclusive interview by Scott Holleran about Nate Parker’s 2016 film, The Birth of a Nation.
Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright & Ayn Rand: An Interview with Architect Dion Neutra
On the eve of his 90th birthday, Dion Neutra sat down at his home with Scott Holleran and remembered his father, his childhood and his career with a great 20th century modern architect including thoughts and remembrances of Richard Neutra’s architecture and relationships with Frank Lloyd Wright and Ayn Rand. Dion Neutra also spoke of his single proudest achievement at Gettysburg.
The Merchant of Mars
The head of NASA convinces the President that space exploration should be done by private industry, and the United States government declares, “The first person to land on Mars, live there a year, and return alive owns the whole Red Planet.” Welcome to the greatest race in history.
The Anti-Capitalist Counter-Revolution On College Campuses
The intellectual intolerance and resort to physical force to prevent speakers from addressing students represents a dangerous totalitarian streak among so-called “progressives.”
The New Left’s False History of Laissez-Faire Capitalism
This “inconvenient history” of how individualism and capitalism changed the course of human events from its thousands-of-years of slavery to near universal human liberty, has been practically eliminated from college courses.
End the National Endowment for the Arts
Government funding of the arts is as deadly as government funding of religion or the press.
Appeasing The Campus “Thought Police”: UCLA Bans Book at a Free Speech Event
If today’s students are increasingly hostile to intellectual freedom, can we really expect tomorrow’s voters, lawyers, judges, politicians to uphold free speech?
The Real Lessons of Middlebury College
So long as academia talks demographic “diversity” and practices groupthink when it comes to ideas, we have little reason to expect better of student mobs that riot with impunity.
Socialism: Marking a Century of Death and Destruction
Everything the Marxists said about capitalism – exploitation of the many by a privileged few; a gross inequality of wealth and opportunity simply due to an artificial arrangement of control over the means of production; a manipulation of reality to make slavery seem as if it meant freedom – was, in fact, the nature and essence, of Soviet socialism.
Creeping Egalitarianism Is Ruining The Oscars
This egalitarian ideal sets the standard as the color of one’s skin, or sex or sexual orientation, as against the quality of the movie, performance or direction.
Education at a Crossroads: Part II
One of the most successful schools I visited was in an aging building in a rundown ghetto neighborhood in New York, where a friend told me that I was “brave” — he meant foolhardy — to park a car.
Interview: Ayn Rand Institute CEO Jim Brown
In his first interview, Ayn Rand Institute’s new CEO, Jim Brown, talked exclusively at his office in Irvine, California with Scott Holleran.
Education at a Crossroads
Teachers’ unions have fought for years to prevent charter schools from being created.
Movie Review: High Noon
United Artists’ High Noon (1952) is a lightning rod of controversy. This compelling movie was made with the best talents and its taut, purpose-driven plot gains and keeps attention. Any honest appraisal must account for its flaws, too. I recently saw it again at...
Mary Tyler Moore: Why So Many Loved Her
You’re gonna make it after all.
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