ArcaMax

I've been thinking a great deal about the close friendship between Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It puzzled -- and sometimes even infuriated -- their followers, but it is a model we should all follow, especially now.

Some of the more distressing phenomena in contemporary American culture are the calls for people...Read more

Netflix, the video streaming giant, is in hot water with at least some segments of the American public because of a French film it is currently showing called "Cuties" ("Mignonnes" in the original French).

The film is about a group of 11-year-old girls in Paris who form a team to enter a dance competition. But this isn't ballet or jazz. It's ...Read more

"Con" in this context is slang for "confidence game" -- an effort to deceive or defraud someone, usually out of money or property. Dictionary.com defines a "long con" this way: "an elaborate confidence game that develops in several stages over an extended period of time wherein the con man or swindler gains the victim's trust, often bypassing ...Read more

Some years ago, Immaculee Ilibagiza wrote "Left to Tell," a poignant memoir about her experiences hiding during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Over a period of three months during spring and summer that year, Rwandans of Hutu ethnicity slaughtered somewhere between 800,000 and a million Rwandans of Tutsi and Twa ethnicity. Ilibagiza only escaped ...Read more

Both during their conventions and outside of them, the Democratic and Republican Parties have shown the American public two visions of our country. And the contrast could not be starker. In order to analyze it, it's essential to separate facts from spin -- particularly media spin, which has been divorced from reality for decades when it comes to...Read more

College students are not adults.

There. I said it.

To be clear, I am not referring to "re-entry" students, those who enroll after working for some years, or after serving in the military. I am referring to the "traditional" college student -- i.e., the 18- or 19-year-old who attends college right out of high school.

They are adults in a ...Read more

Late last week, Thomas Friedman published an opinion piece in The New York Times titled "Beirut's Blast Is a Warning for America." The subhead says, "In this country, as in Lebanon, everything is now politics."

Friedman intones ominously, "(W)hen everything is politics, everything is just about power. There is no center, only sides; no truth, ...Read more

As I write this, some schools across the country are beginning to reopen -- albeit under serious restrictions necessitated by social distancing -- for the 2020-2021 academic year. But the reopenings are patchy and inconsistent, and there is still much opposition. For example, here in South Bend, Indiana, where I live, we were told in July that ...Read more

I watched director Agnieszka Holland's award-winning film "Mr. Jones" this week. It's truly outstanding, a quiet masterpiece about the young Welsh journalist Gareth Jones who risked his life to expose what is now called the Holomodor, the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine caused by the collectivist policies of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Aware of ...Read more

For years, pro-life activists -- including and especially African Americans involved in the pro-life cause -- have called attention to Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, and her deeply racist views.

Sanger was an unabashed eugenicist who believed that entire races and classes of people were inferior and thus "unfit" to reproduce; their...Read more

The Marxist agitators are out in force, chomping at the bit to bring about the destruction of the American way of life. They're certain they're going to get it right this time, exploiting (again) civil unrest and widespread concerns about injustice.

But notwithstanding profound historical injustices like slavery, broken treaties with Native ...Read more

"I can't imagine why you're bothering me when there's rioting in the streets." -- Dr. Whiteface

"Ah, well ... we shall deal with that later. But Captain Vimes always told me, sir, that there are big crimes and little crimes. Sometimes the little crimes look big and the big crimes you can hardly see, but the crucial thing is to decide which is ...Read more

The last few weeks have provided plenty of support for the political positions traditionally espoused by conservatives. Some of the evidence is so painfully obvious it's hard to believe there could be any dispute about it. And yet, disputes there are. In fact, the divisions in this country seem deeper than ever. As we approach the November ...Read more