The Loss of Our Republic Began With this Bank
Cost identifies the major phases of corruption: the national banks, the rise of political parties and bosses, Gilded Age capitalist cronyism, and Progressive bureaucratic sprawl.
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Author: Carl C. Curtis
Donald Trump — The Arrogance of Malvolio
It all comes down to arrogance. Trump is just too much like Malvolio: competent at a limited number of things—managing a household staff, for example. But Malvolio supposes that his limited gifts equip him for loftier, grander things.
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Audacity Defined as “Rude Confidence”
That said, the general idea of the “audacity of hope” was that in an age —pre-2008, you understand — of desperate cynicism, we needed a gargantuan dose of optimism, even chutzpah, to find the silver lining around the darkest of modern clouds, chiefly those hovering above the United States. The only man with the requisite skills for the task was Mr. Audacity-of-Hope-and-Change himself.
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What is So Offensive?
It was a symbol of local pride, and like all things regional and local, it fell under the inflexible scrutiny of progressive aparatchiks and was found wanting as racist, nativist and, of course, political.
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A Man Without Any Sense of Clothes Is a Man Adrift
Yet I hear often enough of students at state universities who attend class in their pajamas; and I once heard the story of a young woman who was stopped by the highway patrol for driving naked. Why? She said it was “hot.” It doubtless was, but her inability to distinguish between dressing appropriately for the season and dressing not at all might stand as a symbol of the times.
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After Gay Marriage, A Look Into the Future
With homosexual marriage given Justice Kennedy’s benediction as an inherent right, is it too far-fetched to envision courts granting homosexual litigants custody of children from the heterosexual marriages being dissolved?
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Shakespeare Was a White Man, So What!
Shakespeare, more or less shorthand for the entire Western tradition, and perhaps its greatest literary manifestation, contains in abundance the most sublime meditations on nature and, outside of Scripture, the deepest insights into the soul of man quite likely ever written: high ambition, hilarious folly, bestial desire and the most refined love.
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Does Anybody Here Know Rip Van Winkle?
But what of a modern-day Rip Van Winkle? First of all, the modern Rip would not need to snooze for twenty years; a mere eight or fewer might suffice for him to find changes unimaginable before his nap.
Read MoreDownton Abbey (Season 5): Down the drain?
But with season five of Downtown Abbey now history, I will say that while the characters were still there, the plots were not. A good character in a bad plot is liable to look like an idiot or a bore, and in either case, a major irritant.
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Don’t Blame the Students for Deconstructing
As to how we teach the post-modern student, put simply, we don’t. We are to engage. Now I’m all for a good class discussion, but I also know that students with minds as poorly stocked with the simple facts of history, literature, and politics require teaching and lots of it.
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