Drivel’s Advocate: Why Nonsense Is Necessary
“To us it should be plain that bad information accompanies the good: that it is (as death is to life) the necessary dark background against which one might see any light at all.”
Vahaken Mouradian
Peter Boghossian: On the Purpose of Education
“It’s not that there’s anything wrong with debate. In fact, debate, in certain circumstances, can be good, but we can often solve the problems…through conversation.”
The Power of Facing: A Review of “Christopher Hitchens” by Ben Burgis
“One of the causes of tension with Noam Chomsky, for example, Burgis observes, was Hitchens’ recognition that the forces of anti-imperialism today are dissimilar to ‘Ho Chi Minh or the Sandinistas.’”
The Mirage of Media Objectivity
“Writing becomes a contest between mutually incompatible conceptions of public life. We do not simply have varying prescriptions for social ills; the afflictions we observe are fundamentally different.”
Withdrawal Symptoms
“Dear doves and hawks and other feathered brethren: It is already over.”
In Support of Snobbery
“The work of totalitarianism takes a lot of muscle, but most of it is done by just one: the wooden tongue.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Immigration, Islam, and Christopher Hitchens
“What I have found in the book is strong enough to suggest that there is a correlation between mass migration from Muslim-majority countries and the increase in sexual violence.”
A Big, Bad Word
“But the thinking man ought to deploy le mot juste—the precise term—because of the heartburn it gives petty tyranny, as all truths reliably do.”
Rialpolitik: The New Iranian Dealmakers
“Policy towards Iran must be suited not to religious ideologues who happen to be flush with petrocash but, rather, to racketeers who happen to be religious ideologues.”
Lefties Have More Fun
“Left movements exude the zest of adolescence, which is why they can generate so much thrill and camaraderie and—when they occasionally succeed—such deflated confusion and hollowness.”
Letter to an American Agonist
“What the United States shares with Athens is not the pretense of democracy, or any other feature of the content of her tradition but, rather, her citizens’ uncommon commitment to contesting it.”