The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

History as Heritage and Legacy (and Something I Learned About My Parents)

  Who are those good-looking young people? That’s my mother and father, as students at the University of Alabama circa 1950. Dad was a World War II veteran attending on the G.I. Bill, and I’m not sure if he met my mother in Tuscaloosa, or if she started going there after he married her. Both […]

It’s Very Simple

  Many of our country’s problems can be traced to a single factor: Two headlines splashed across adjoining pages of the Wall Street Journal this week underscored a desperate but largely uncommented-on challenge facing America. “Red Ink Seen for Social Security by 2020,” screamed one, as the program’s outlays will exceed income next year — and […]

Post-Thanksgiving After-Action Report

We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing; He chastens and hastens His will to make known; The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing; Sing praises to His Name, He forgets not His own. Our family sang that ancient hymn — which originated in 16th-century Holland — before we ate the turkey, which was cooked […]

Parenting in the #MeToo Era

  Megan Fox at PJMedia is a mother, with a young son, and she’s angry: Mothers of sons everywhere should be terrified by the constant destruction of men by duplicitous, lying women and an overzealous and political Senate confirmation process. All a scheming broad has to do these days is claim that your son touched […]

Please Help My Brother Kirby: Strange and Savage Tales of ‘Backroads’ McCain

Kirby as a senior at Douglas County (Ga.) High School, 1975. My older brother Kirby is a legend to those who know him. Did I ever mention, for example, that he once dated Miss Teen Georgia? Kirby was working at Six Flags Over Georgia, operating one of the trams that conveyed guests from the parking […]

NY Times: ‘Motherhood Is Hitler’

  The New York Times has a distinctly weird article, written by a British graduate student, smearing traditional stay-at-home mothers with the taint of “white supremacy.” The writer is able to find actual examples of neo-Nazi racialism in the online “tradwives” community, but it is always possible to find examples of anything on the Internet, […]

The Not-So-Secrets of Success

About five years ago — somewhere between the second Anthony Weiner scandal and the time the Kaitlyn Hunt saga made national headlines — I began to realize that our civilization was unraveling because parents were failing to give kids common-sense advice. Many young people (and not a small number of adults) were making bad decisions […]

Patriarchy Means Paying the Bills

My son Jim taking an Easter afternoon hike with his two sons. Friday, I worked from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. with my 24-year-old son who does home-improvement contracting jobs with a side business mowing lawns. It was the latter enterprise where I’d volunteered to help, which meant riding around on a zero-turn lawnmower at […]

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