The meaning of religious freedom came home to me, fittingly enough, by the dawn’s early light, slanting through a dormitory window in China many years ago. I was one of 10 young people spending a summer teaching English as a Second Language classes at an agricultural college 3,000 miles west of Beijing, in what’s known
READ MOREWhen I was in high school, I had a classmate who obsessively sorted everyone in the school into made-up categories. It seemed like every week, he would invent new sets of criteria by which to group us. For reasons I couldn’t fully explain, I hated it. It was only years later, when employers started asking
READ MOREIn Mark Helprin’s humorous and insightful novel Freddy and Fredericka, Freddy, the bumbling Prince of Wales and heir to the throne, and his spoiled wife Fredericka, are dispatched on a special mission: to conquer the United States of America. Wearing “modesty panels of golden rabbits’ fur,” they parachute into New Jersey at night and set off
READ MOREWomen’s athletics have been a subject of a growing transgender inclusion controversy that threatens to blow open wide as high school sports, college, the Olympics, and even the professional level are grappling with how to balance fairness with a new demand for “inclusion.” There are questions about how transgender athletes should qualify for participation, and
READ MOREHere I am visiting with my son, his wife, and their children in Asheville, North Carolina. This morning I was outside enjoying the dawn and the crowing of the roosters when I looked with new eyes at the yellow recycling bins at the edge of their driveway. Soon I was rooting through that bin, pulling
READ MOREWant to know some surprising facts about transgenderism? Physician Michael Laidlaw has some to offer in a recent article for Public Discourse: More than 60 gender clinics have opened in the U.S. since 2007. The transgender student population is growing. Surveys show “as many as 3 percent of school kids now identify as transgender.” One
READ MORENew Hampshire legislators have introduced an election bill that would be completely unacceptable under normal circumstances. But these are not normal times. Constitutional institutions, especially the Electoral College, are under attack. Extraordinary action may be needed. Thus, some New Hampshire legislators have proposed to withhold popular vote totals at the conclusion of a presidential election. The numbers
READ MOREAs the 2020 election approaches in the United States, President Donald Trump is adding school prayer to the list of contentious issues up for debate. At a rally in early January he announced plans to “safeguard students’ and teachers’ First Amendment rights to pray in our schools.” On the schedule of the White House later
READ MOREDespite Venezuela’s track record of seizing the means of production of a multitude of industries?, there are still those who have trouble calling Venezuela a socialist state. The denials are getting more creative. The most recent comes in Jack Ryan, Amazon Prime’s hit show starring John Krasinski as the protagonist from Tom Clancy’s best-selling books.
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