If there is such a thing as a formula for making a hit film, it has something to do with giving audiences a new and unusual villain. Over the years, screenwriters have thrown their protagonists up against enemies as thuggish as boss Johnny Friendly in 1954’s On the Waterfront and as smooth as Olivier’s Crassus as in […]
Hollywood Ignores One of America’s Worst Villains Read More »
I did not intend for this to read like a cautionary editorial. When the Spectator World asked me to do a piece on the BA.2 Omicron subvariant, I thought I would simply be updating readers on the progress of the latest Covid mutation. And while the BA.2 is fast spreading, it appears to be no more life
Government Lockdowns Backfired — Encouraged Defiance Read More »
While watching news reports of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, I find myself recalling that memorable scene in the 1970 movie Patton when the general directs his chief chaplain, Msgr. James H. O’Neill, to write a prayer to end the bad weather holding up the Third Army’s advance. “Let’s see if we can get God working with us on this thing,”
Gen. Patton’s Wartime Prayer Read More »
For anyone who took a college course in psychology more than a decade ago or who is even casually acquainted with the subject through popular articles, a close examination of today’s field would undoubtedly prove surprising. The science that for most of the 20th century portrayed itself as the enlightened alternative to organized religion has
Psychology Rediscovers Religion Read More »
No one need ask why the strict public health regime to manage Covid — masks, mandates, quarantines, and required inoculations — has begun to collapse. Between angry truckers, unfavorable polling for continued lockdowns, the perception of a Wuhan coverup, changing reports of vaccine effectiveness, and declining hospitalizations, even President Biden and blue state governors realize
Our Post-Covid World Has Some Unexpected Benefits Read More »
One of the few good things to come out of the pandemic has been the option to work from home (WFH). According to a Stanford University study of 17,000 employees, 50 percent of respondents who stayed at their jobs without commuting wanted to keep working from home at least part-time after Covid. And a September 2021 survey
How Working from Home Threatens Foreign Tyrants Read More »
As more people, both in the U.S. and around the world, wake up to the reality of spiraling inflation, it becomes clear just how much of the overspending and deficits driving inflation are attributable to self-serving government inefficiencies. As the great economist Friedrich von Hayek once said, outbreaks of inflation are almost always “engineered by
Inflation Will End Wokeness Read More »
If a recent Scientific American opinion piece purporting to explain how growing opposition to critical race theory damages public education reveals anything, it is that the real problem with today’s left goes much deeper than its progressive ideology. The co-authors assert that resistance to CRT is based on white supremacy, a refusal to acknowledge history, a rebirth of
The Rise of the Second-String Left Read More »
The prospect of colonizing Mars used to be no more than a distant fantasy, but today it seems tantalizingly real. NASA remains committed to building a deep-space passenger capsule called the Orion. Meantime, private companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX are bringing excitement to the field. Elon Musk hopes to put 200 colonists on the
Finding God on a Mars Colony Read More »
One of the most gripping scenes in the classic film Casablanca is at the very beginning, when many of the characters who would feature in the story are seen together in a busy city plaza. Suddenly silent as a small Lisbon-bound plane passes overhead, they all look up, and the audience can see in their
Escaping from South Africa During the Omicron Panic Read More »