At their inauguration, public leaders must swear to uphold unwritten law and weep to atone for their presumption to hold office – Seamus Heaney, ‘From the Republic of Conscience’ With a Dublin Central by-election on the horizon, Irish politics appears to be descending into GUBU. The ‘grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented’ prospect of alleged crime … Read more
It’s very possible that Renee Nicole Good reasoned, as I would’ve, that her whiteness would protect her when she put her Honda Pilot, dog in tow, in the path of ICE vehicles on a Minneapolis street less than a mile from where George Floyd’s last words were, just six years before, “I can’t breathe.” Unfortunately … Read more
There is a hidden global superpower that dominates all our lives. It does not reside inside any government building or military base, but instead, rests snug as a bug within each and every one of us – the brain. In centuries past, it was widely believed that human consciousness was located somewhere between the heart … Read more
A few years ago, I had occasion to walk regularly past the university in Galway. My journeys took me across the Salmon Weir Bridge, which had narrow footpaths and has since been relieved by a new footbridge, and up past the cathedral and the university. Often, I found myself walking against the current of students … Read more
The common denominator between charities and private service providers is that they all live off public money on the basis of serving “victims” of one stripe or another, the raw material of these particular “industries”. But a victim helped and eventually “cured” is no use to this business model. To make it viable you need … Read more
The cultural commentator Konstantin Kisin said recently in a podcast that the left had destroyed language. For instance, the lazy use of the words “nazi” and “fascist” to condemn someone who holds differing views has only succeeded in draining those words of meaning. If everyone is a fascist then no one is; and what then … Read more
On Tuesday last I had an email from the Chancellor of UMass Lowell, where I sometimes teach: “I am sorry to let you know that this changed over the weekend. As part of the university’s proactive effort to support and inform our international students, the International Students & Scholars Office (ISSO) has been regularly monitoring … Read more
In George Orwell’s 1939 novel Coming Up For Air, at the beginning of chapter 4, issue is taken with substandard food products, which do not taste like the product promoted and, indeed, taste like something else: At this moment I bit into one of my frankfurters, and—Christ! I can’t honestly say that I’d expected the … Read more
Like most of us, I spent the past week in a state of deep reflection over our collective national fate. Like some of us, I mourned. The American political sphere seems to have reached an anti-zenith, one culminating in some dystopian rhetorical Babel tower built and sustained by hatred. What have I seen in my … Read more