‘Most people become “ready to get married” when they get married.’

Dennis Prager offers some incisive observations about our culture and growing up.

The same holds true for becoming a parent. Very few people are “ready” to become parents. They become ready . . . once they become parents. In fact, the same holds true for any difficult job. What new lawyer was “ready” to take on his or her first clients? What new teacher, policeman, firefighter is “ready”?

Trump in One Sentence

Often the “Happy Warrior” columns on the back page of National Review these days (when I can bring myself to try reading them at all) seem to be trying really hard to be funny, which is a poor substitute for actually being funny.  (I guess most writers are a poor substitute for Mark Steyn.  It’s an unfair position to put them in.)  But I thought Heather Wilhelm’s offering in the current issue had a pretty good line:

We have Mr. Trump, of course, a crafty, plotting sort who lurks and waits until the national conversation reaches a tipping point—just this close to veering into a substantive, crucial discussion—before he kicks in the door, bellows something mean about all of our mothers, shoots out the chandelier with a paintball gun, and sucks all the air out of the room.

‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep’

Merry Christmas!

Donald Trump as Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes

Mashable explains the concept of “Donald and Hobbes”, a Reddit page dedicated to contributors’ incisive and humorous Photoshops of Donald Trump as Calvin in Calvin & Hobbes.

Many of them are surprisingly apt (and many of the rest are still pretty funny).  There’s even one where he asks a Ouija board whether he’ll be president one day:

Thomas Sowell Patiently Explains Academic Mismatch to Leftists Crying ‘Racist’

During recent oral arguments before the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia mentioned the theory of academic mismatch, that affirmative action hurts its intended beneficiaries by putting each affected student (whatever his individual academic level) in a school where he will be below average and do poorly, rather than a school where he will be on par with his classmates and do well.

English Translation of Mark Steyn’s Interview with Bonjour le Chat

Mark Steyn writes, “A couple of days ago France’s leading feline forum, Bonjour Le Chat, interviewed me about Marvin. For non-francophones, I’ll provide a few anglo snippets once this Senate testimony’s behind me.”

‘Democrats have sown the wind and could reap the windbag’

Favorite politics-as-politics line of the day, from Kevin Williamson:

Democrats have sown the wind and could reap the windbag — or a Texas tornado

Kevin Williamson sometimes sounds about as sweet as a boiling bucket of bile, but other times—OK, oftentimes—the man has a way with words.  He has other great lines in this piece alone.

C. S. Lewis: Soldier, Scholar, Poet, and Secret Agent

Fascinating new information, reported directly by the person who discovered it:

“C.S. Lewis Was a Secret Government Agent: A recent discovery unveils an unknown chapter in the life the famous Oxford Don.”
Harry Lee Poe, Christianity Today, December 10th, 2015

He happened to see an old phonograph record on Ebay, which turned out to be of a lecture that Lewis scholars never knew he had given—until now.

‘I can’t deny I was married. I can’t deny I have children . . . But I’ve moved forward now and I’ve gone back to being a child. I don’t want to be an adult right now.’

Uh…

Whether this is a true story or not, the above line may be the perfect encapsulation of our culture today.  Pathological narcissism, check.  Increasingly parodic refusal to be a grown-up, check.

Imperial Candidate Donald Trump

“Trump: I will mandate death penalty for killing police officers”

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Thursday vowed to issue an executive order to mandate the death penalty for anyone who kills a police officer.

I’m not even sure I disagree at all with the policy as policy, but…

Proposed future headlines:

“Trump: I will mandate judges make good decisions”
Trump vowed to make a “strong statement” with an executive order if elected.

Exclude Islamists, Not Muslims

Donald Trump was never the person to go to for serious, thoughtful policy proposals. Maybe after he’s done sucking up all the media attention, the rest of us can have a serious conversation.

NRO’s Mark Krikorian has some ideas.

“It’s Time for a Grown-Up Alternative to Trump’s Crude Muslim-Immigration Proposal”

New York Times’ Sloppy Diction

Update (December 7th, 2015):  Trying to be more-pretentious-than-thou is a pretty pretentious thing to do; so it’s fitting that I was in turn also (half) incorrect.  A friend points out to me that Sciences Po actually is a place—“the nickname for a prestigious French University that focuses on the social sciences,” as my friend puts it.  (Arguably I should still get half credit—the arch-formal Times refers by a nickname to a school not otherwise introduced in the text of the article?)  Anyway my point about “veered”/”verged” stands—and the Times apparently agrees, having since belatedly corrected the word in the online version of the article (without leaving any indication that they were wrong or made any change).

Original post begins:

While I haven’t been on the same page as the New York Times politically for a long time, I’ve actually always admired their stubborn, increasingly countercultural (what John Derbyshire might call “cussedness”) insistence on some of the old manners—referring to all the people in their articles as “Mr.”, for example, and all the rest of their genteel, old-school aesthetic, expressed in everything from their word choice to the typefaces of the headlines.

Of course, that self-consciously heightened tone can also come across as condescending and full of themselves.  So I can’t resist pointing out that they’re slipping.

Five Things to Keep in Mind when the Left Goes Crazy over the Planned Parenthood Shooting

For those who want to blame last Friday’s Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooter on the pro-life movement:

First, the movement that’s entirely about opposition to murder obviously does not support murder.  All the pro-life leaders condemn the Planned Parenthood shooting.

Second, this guy had nothing to do with the local pro-life movement.  The Washington Times reports,

A Roman Catholic priest who has held weekly Mass in front of the clinic for 20 years said Dear wasn’t part of his group.

“I don’t know him from Adam,” said Rev. Bill Carmody. “I don’t recognize him at all.”