A Distorted View of CEO Pay

Peter Eavis has written a very odd column for the New York Times . It begins: “This is not a difficult time to be a chief executive,” and it takes...

Rahm Emanuel, Bailout Critic

Here is born-against populist Rahm Emanuel writing in The Atlantic about the automobile-industry bailouts that were undertaken by the Obama...

Annals of Inequality

Jessica Chastain, who sometimes lectures the world about “wage equality” while making films financed by the money billionaire tech tycoon Larry...

Correction

One of those things I seem to have a mental block about: I mentioned Jonathan Last’s excellent essay “The Case for the Empire” on MD&E today,...

Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg

Libertarianism on the Cheap

Asked about the possibility of putting some restrictions on horrifying late-term abortions — which are legal in many places up until the moment of...

Why Dems think they can virtue signal their way to the White House

If the presidential candidacy of Mayor de Blasio has any hope (and it does not), it is because Americans have stopped looking for leadership and...

Some Very Odd Claims about Abortion Politics

Reading Wired’s Virginia Heffernan on abortion politics, I am reminded of how little people who write about abortion politics seem to know about...

The Failure of Socialism

National Review has been hosting a discussion about free enterprise and socialism, and it contains some very good stuff. But it is dispiriting that we...

‘Believe Survivors, Full Stop’

Anita Hill has an article about Joe Biden, sexual harassment, and sexual violence in today’s New York Times. It is published under the headline,...

‘Clarence Thomas and the Lost Constitution’

I would like to recommend to you all Dennis Prager’s interview with Myron Magnet of City Journal. The subject is Magnet’s new book, Clarence...

Your New Neighbors in Austin

The New York Times has a big scoo p: Economic incentives incentivize people. Mr. McMullen, 33, is part of an exclusive club: the semiretired tech...

Hickenlooper Makes His Case, Poorly

“The curious task of economics,” as F. A. Hayek famous put it, “is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine...

Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘hate ban’ isn’t about safety — it’s about his own ego

Why is Alex Jones permitted to have a telephone? It’s a serious question. Facebook on Thursday announced that a small assortment of kooks — Alex...

‘Numbered Swiss Account’

Writing in the New York Times about the least sympathetic subject in American life — the budgetary aspirations of the Internal Revenue Service —...

Will They Ever ‘Accept the Results’?

Anybody remember way back in 2016 when refusing to “accept the results” of the presidential election — whatever that means — was tantamount to...

The Mood of the Democratic Party

Bernie Sanders had a hard time of it in Houston. In a particularly striking moment, host Aimee Allison asked Sanders what he would do to fight...

Camille Paglia vs. Morons

Advantage: Paglia.

A Little More on NYU

I’m going to pick on Professor Mark Kleiman of NYU’s Marron Institute of Urban Management for a bit, and not just because I’m cheesed about his...

The State of Scholarship

Mark Kleiman, who is a professor of public policy at the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management, says that it is a “flat-out lie” that Milwaukee...

Median Wage at Phillips: Almost $200K

Here’s some very good economic news: Houston-based Phillips 66 paid its median worker $196,407, the highest of any company in the sector. Phillips...

Trollery and More Serious Things

This report from Rachelle Hampton in Slate , about alt-right trolls who pose as black women on social media in order to spread racial stereotypes and...

Shame, Indeed

In a conversation with Bret Stephens, Gail Collins offers this possible rationale for voting for Senator Bernie Sanders: “Bernie Sanders would not...

‘Wokeness,’ You Say?

Justin Charity writes: Now, Williamson will write entire columns in which he simply rants about “woke” people and “wokeness” in some form or...

Re: Character Is Destiny

Jonah writes: Reince Priebus, Donald McGahn, NSA Director Mike Rogers, and countless other Deep Staters and Establishmentarians did Trump one enormous...

Andy’s Identity Crisis

Somebody check on McCarthy. The New York Times is calling him a “centrist.” Rich is concerned about which pronouns he prefers.

MoveOn.GOP?

Some of you will be familiar with a lefty, partisan Democratic organization called MoveOn, formerly MoveOn.Org. It was founded during an investigation...

India’s Economy to Surpass Britain’s

In 2019, India’s economy will have officially grown larger than that of the United Kingdom, India’s former colonial master. From the Wall Street...

[Sic]

The hate-speech hysteria is only the second-most-damning thing about Kat Timpf’s post on Michigan State University.

A Swing and a Miss for Ballers

I’ve really enjoyed the HBO series Ballers, which I have just got caught up on. The business and social issues surrounding professional sports (the...

If You Think Law School Is a Scam, Try Cosmetology

Kim Kardashian apparently plans to follow in the career path of . . . Abraham Lincoln, and become a lawyer without going to law school. California is...

About Style

Writing on Twitter, Jordan Weissmann of Slate has some observations about conservatives and prose style: William F. Buckley (“dreck”), the Weekly...

‘His Own People’

Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the dictator of Sudan, has been removed from power. His crimes, as the Washington Post put it, include “genocide against his...

A Clockwork Passenger

Memo to: Doug Parker, CEO, American Airlines From: Kevin D. Williamson, captive in 1D Re: Bound and gagged, corporate hostility, invasive...

Politics and the Not-Quite-English Language

From the New York Times: For Wikipedia’s editing community, the website is even more. It is a kind of social network where users debate the minutiae...

Big, Nasty, and . . . Prudent?

One of the longstanding criticisms of American business is that its executives are hostages to “quarterly capitalism,” that they suffer from an...

Re: ICE Arrests 280 Illegal Employees

Am I the only one who thinks there is something very obvious and very important missing from this ICE account?

We Hold This Truth to Be Self-Evident

Caitlyns gonna Caitlyn.

A Little More on the Death Penalty

A tediously familiar objection inevitably is raised by my piece today, in which I write that one of the main arguments against capital...

Nationalism, Croatia, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia

With regard to nationalism, a commenter offers: “Without nationalism there would be no Croatia, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, etc.”Two out of three...

On Snobbery

Writing in  Areo , Michael Blatt takes me to task for  . . . I’m not entirely sure what. I don’t think he is, either.    He writes: “...

Cambridge Rescinds Its Offer to Jordan Peterson

Cambridge has rescinded the offer of a visiting professorship to Jordan Peterson. The  language of the announcement exemplifies the by-now familiar...

Elite Omphaloskepsis: A Series

Our policies are made by elites, and so our policymaking conversation is dominated by elite interests. Hence the hysterical outrage over the college...

College Admissions Scandals, Again

I have been receiving congratulations this week from friends who are thrilled on my behalf to learn that my alma mater, the University of Texas, is...

Phony Texan-ism 

David  Remnick , editor of  The New Yorker , asked staff writer Lawrence Wright to “explain Texas.”  He made this request because he was...

An Inquiry Answered 

Regarding my post below on the admissions scandal, a reader asks about “agate.” Sometimes, I forget that my little obsessions are not shared by...

College Prep Is Not Bribery 

There are two main modes of moral reasoning. One of them is based around rules, and the other is based around relationships. The simplest version is ...

‘Explosive Revelations’ 

With the usual reminder that I think it is fair to say I am not chief among Donald Trump’s admirers around here, this sort of thing makes me roll my...

Wealth Porn

Comments ...

About That College-Admissions Scandal 

If you would like to see a dramatic illustration of my (probably too) often-hammered-on point about how elite discourse always reflects elite...