Culture

How Country Music Speaks for Everyday Americans 0
- Entertainment, Culture
- August 22, 2023
Taylor Swift may be the hottest ticket this summer, but her listeners don’t share her country roots. That space has been captured by a series of anthems singing the blue-collar blues, songs that are a lot closer to—and a lot more correct—about what is bugging everyday Americans. American music has always been an echo chamber
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Sex Is a Community Matter 6
- Family, Culture
- August 21, 2023
It’s been more than 60 years since the sexual revolution of the 1960s swept across the nation removing sexual barriers and changing beliefs around sex. These days, most people have accepted the idea that what two consenting adults do sexually is their own business, and the idea that sex is for forming families through the
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Farmer and Former Factory Worker Finds Overnight Fame with Viral Country Ballad 5
- Culture, Entertainment
- August 18, 2023
Last week, Oliver Anthony was a blue-collar worker from Farmville, Virginia, living on a 90-acre farm with his three dogs, a man unknown to the world. Today, his song “Rich Men North of Richmond” is at the top of the global music charts. A backyard recording of his “blue collar anthem,” as it’s been dubbed,
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Liberalism Is Broken and Canada Proves It 1
- Culture, Philosophy, Politics
- August 17, 2023
Liberalism is broken. This is a big kick-sand-in-my-face claim. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Canada’s embrace of euthanasia supplies that evidence. Let’s unpack this. First, what is “liberalism”? Its meaning shifts depending on whether one is speaking of economics or politics or ethics. Edmund Fawcett’s excellent Liberalism: The Life of an Idea, surveys scores of
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Stop the Grandstanding in Women’s Soccer 9
- Culture
- August 16, 2023
Upon learning that the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT) was knocked out of the Women’s World Cup after a 5-4 loss to Sweden, I was not very sympathetic toward the team. It was particularly fitting that Megan Rapinoe, the team’s sour-faced forward and chief political activist, missed an important goal kick near the end of
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Ne-Yo and the Struggle Session That Went Off-Script 5
- Culture, Entertainment
- August 11, 2023
“Struggle sessions” were a form of public humiliation and ideological re-education used during Maoist China. They involved mass gatherings where counterrevolutionaries and other enemies of the Communist Party were subjected to criticism, verbal abuse, and physical humiliation. The aim of a struggle session was to force the dissenter to confess their supposed wrongdoings and embrace
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