The Other McCain

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

Bolshevik Subversive Conor Friedersdorf: Innocent ‘Liberal’ Dupe or Red Agent?

“The Communists (we must give them credit for many things) are intelligent, are well disciplined, and take their orders direct from Moscow and are proud of it. . . . “Not only is Soviet Russia trying to wipe out all forms of religion, but it is successful in doing it.” — Rep. Hamilton Fish (R-New […]

Notes on Hip: Hanson as Sontag

Susan Sontag circa 1965 In 1964, Susan Sontag published a 6,000-word essay in Partisan Review called “Notes on ‘Camp,’” which described a hitherto little-noted phenomenon: A sensibility emerging from the gay subculture and just then beginning to diffuse itself through the world of art and theater. Sontag was a prodigy: She graduated high school at 15, […]

The Winners Write the History Books

“People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.” — Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) “In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived […]

The Sexual Avant-Garde

From the Wall Street Journal: Writing to James Jones in 1965, [novelist William Styron] describes a weekend visit to the Vineyard by Jackie Kennedy: “We swam around quite a bit on the ocean beach and I rubbed a good deal of Sea n’ Ski foam on the widow’s thighs. . . . I hate to […]

The Stalinist at Montclair State

Smitty blogged about this Monday, but amid the election excitement, I worry that it may have been overlooked. During an Oct. 25 debate at Montclair State University, Professor Grover Furr denied the systematic mass murders committed under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin: “What you said is a bulls–t. It’s wrong. It’s a lie. . . . […]

The French Vs. American Revolution

by Smitty Interesting piece at Ladd Ehlinger’s blog on the French Revolution. In particular: My opponent, on the other hand, made the curious observation that the Reign of Terror was a necessary step in rooting out the French monarchy. I don’t recall the exact wording, but it had something to do with the French having […]

The FBI and ‘Fedora’

Wow. OK, I just finished reading Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald, a 1978 book by Edward Jay Epstein, and as soon as I finished it, I got on Google to solve the mystery. This is complicated. The mystery at the heart of Epstein’s book is this: Why did Oswald defect to the […]

Alienated and Angry and Arrogant

We have recently been presented with the puzzle of James Holmes, who has been arrested for the massacre that killed 12 people and wounded dozens more at a Colorado movie theatre. You have to shake your head in dismay at reading stories like this: Holmes was awarded a prestigious grant from the National Institutes of […]

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