The Latest(ish)
FOR those of us who like to believe, however tentatively, in human progress, the notion that there are 21st-century Americans who think that the brave, benign—and fictional—Harry Potter can be used as a recruitment officer for the occult is profoundly depressing. And yet there are surprisingly many who fear just that. For year after year now, different school districts across the country have faced complaints whenever the hero of Hogwarts rides his Nimbus 2000 broom- stick onto the curriculum or into the library. But the Lord, or the market, works in mysterious ways and those so harried by the thought [...]
The Trouble With Harry
December 31, 2004
"Shadowmancer" and "Wormwood" by G. P. Taylor.; published originally in National Review
In Soviet movies in Stalin’s day, peasants sang and factories hummed. In America, by contrast, a country where the economic system has actually delivered the goods, Hollywood’s hymns to the glories of office or factory are, with occasional exceptions, either off-key or nonexistent. Just as “Tucker – The Man and His Dream,” possibly the finest movie ever made on the American auto industry, was about failure, so films about the American workplace tend to be dyspeptic, depressing, and filled with resentment: Chaplin’s “Modern Times” is a parable of alienation, Billy Wilder’s “Apartment” becomes a sty for management swine, and no [...]
What’s So Fascinating About Office Politics
December 29, 2004
In Good Company; published originally in The New York Sun
If the painter Thomas Kinkade has redesigned Heaven—and who’s to say that he hasn’t?—it might look a little like Lily Dale, a tiny community about an hour south of Buffalo. On a gentle-breeze, blue-sky, no-cares, endless-summer sort of day, gingerbread Victorian cottages doze alongside tranquil, flag-festooned streets. The houses’ colors—white, yellow, gray—are, like their inhabitants, mainly muted, gentle by design or faded by the years. Only occasional flashes of eccentricity—an unexpected plague of stone angels here, a rash of concrete cherubs there—signal to visitors that there’s something not quite right, not Shyamalan wrong, but odd nonetheless, about this idyllic village [...]
Dead Zone
December 8, 2004
It’s far too soon to know if the 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim fanatic will turn out to be a warning heeded in time, or if it will prove to be just another episode in the decline of a country wrecked by the mixing of multiculturalism with mass immigration. Judging by the nature of the debate ahead of Holland’s upcoming elections, judging by the departure of parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali to the safer, more welcoming haven of America, and judging by this perceptive, misguided, depressing, and (sometimes unconsciously) revealing book, it will be the [...]
Cultural Suicide
December 4, 2004
Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance, by Ian Buruma; published originally in National Review
Ian Kershaw is best known for “Hitler,” his two-volume, definitive account of one of history’s monsters. His new book, by contrast, deals with an irritating British nobleman who was at best a footnote, at worst a nonentity. In telling the strange, sad story of the lord who tried to befriend a fuhrer, Mr. Kershaw highlights the English ineptitude that was to prove so helpful to the German dictator throughout the 1930s. “Making Friends With Hitler” (The Penguin Press, 488 pages, $29.95) also comes with a disturbing contemporary resonance. In part it’s a tale of people living in the comfort of [...]
Stumbling Down the Road to Hell
December 2, 2004
Making Friends With Hitler; published originally in The New York Sun
Charles Murray have a difficult time in high school? Judging by what he writes, when he writes, and how he writes, he’s someone who would not have enjoyed the conformist, unimaginative world of contemporary American secondary education. A controversialist who never knows when to stop, a math geek who understands what counts, Murray was probably jostled in the school yard, pushed about in the cafeteria, and, in that hallmark of intellectual independence, repeatedly hauled up in front of the principal. “Murray, don’t ever, ever argue with your teachers again.” His best-known work, 1994’s The Bell Curve (co-written with Richard J. [...]
Measuring Man
December 1, 2004
Human Accomplishment by Charles Murray; published originally in Hudson Institute