“We in Britain,” Roger Scruton says, “are entering a dangerous social condition in which the expression of opinions that conflict—or merely seem to conflict—with a narrow set of orthodoxies is instantly punished by a band of self-appointed vigilantes.”
“It serves as a reminder of why the Democratic Party lost long ago its former base in the white working class, which should be a source of shame for party members but often is not.”
Read “Popular song as populist revolt,” by Victor Davis Hanson.
The absolutely brilliant thing about Titania McGrath, as the world just discovered last month, is that she is really the satirical invention of Andrew Doyle, a former Oxford postgraduate student and clearly a very clever man.
Igor Levit is one of the best pianists of our time, or any, really. He is a person of extraordinary talent, extraordinary intellect, and extraordinary intensity.
@jaynordlinger
The left-wing campus culture that then permeates the tech companies masks the greatest concentration of wealth in the history of civilization.
@VDHanson
Welcoming
@DouglasKMurray
as one of our Visiting Critics this upcoming publishing season. He will deliver our next Circle Lecture on September 26 in New York on “The profundity of evil,” drawing from his on-the-ground reporting from Israel in the aftermath of the attacks of
Those who do not know his work often see Scruton as a pessimist, a perception he did not always discourage. But even at his most pessimistic he found things to celebrate and shoots of new life and learning to encourage.
@DouglasKMurray
Up to 1940, Churchill had been a great but somewhat quixotic romantic. Then he suddenly became the only man who could prevent Hitler, Stalin, and the Japanese from taking over the entire Eurasian landmass.
@aroberts_andrew
@ConradMBlack
@VikingBooks
One of the characteristics for which the English gentleman is famed is his self-deprecation. He is trained in understatement in all things; he has litotes coursing through his veins.
The real threat, the one Philip Hamburger so discerningly captures by contextualizing an abstruse revenue law, is that we may have realized Tocqueville’s dystopian forecast: too infantilized by liberalism to see the stakes.
@AndrewCMcCarthy
@UChicagoPress
“Late Wagner does unmistakably sink into an “eternal song” where all seems interconnected. Karlsson’s score, in its own lugubrious way, achieves a certain endlessness as well.”
Read “Opera at the end of the world,” by Veronica Maldonado.
In truth, we free-marketeers believe not in trickle-down, but in trickle-up: capitalism, uniquely, rewards people who offer goods or services to the masses.
This was the “double shock” of the Trump election, for not only did Trump pull off the electoral upset against the odds, but he also turned the liberal historical narrative on its head...
@ConradMBlack
Politically incorrect phrases are unearthed, torn from their original context, and passed like antique shards in front of the tremulous outrage meter of the Left.
@Roger_Scruton
Tocqueville feared that the democratic revolution in America might eventually produce a passive population that has traded its liberty and independence in exchange for comfort and security.
Would even the most cynical among us suppose that the tax code, in just one of its most promiscuous provisions, reflects the uniquely American history of left-wing hostility to free speech? Philip Hamburger would.
@AndrewCMcCarthy
@UChicagoPress
“At Princeton, it is now possible to graduate with a degree in classics and not to have studied Greek or Latin at all. Quod erat demonstrandum!”
Read “The burden of the humanities,” by Wilfred M. McClay.
“America may be still a constitutional republic in name, but recently it has operated more as an unchecked Athenian-style democracy.”
Read “Our Athenian American democracy,” by Victor Davis Hanson.
@VDHanson
The rise of Donald Trump from Manhattan real estate mogul to national television celebrity to President of the United States was as unprecedented as it was disorienting.
@ConradMBlack
@Regnery
The petition to remove Balthus’s painting is not only comically opportunistic; it is also offensively patronizing. It presumes that the viewer is too stupid to see the provocation of “Thérèse Dreaming” and react to it accordingly.
The Prado emerged from a long slumber starting in the 1980s, as did Spain. Today it is a thriving, modern museum, surely among the world’s liveliest spots to see Old Masters.
@museodelprado
Kirk wrote, "No matter how admirable our Constitution may look on paper, it will be ineffectual unless the unwritten Constitution, that web of forms and convention, affirms an underlying moral order of obligation and personal responsibility," quotes Gerald Russello of
@ubookman
.
The rise of Donald Trump from Manhattan real estate mogul to national television celebrity to President of the United States was as unprecedented as it was disorienting.
@conradmblack
@regnery
The rise of Donald Trump from Manhattan real estate mogul to national television celebrity to President of the United States was as unprecedented as it was disorienting.
@ConradMBlack
Camille Paglia brand of libertarian feminism stands in clear contrast to the incessant voices of mainstream feminism that demand women be given special privileges without personal responsibility.
Our critic’s pick: “The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics,” by Richard Hanania (Broadside Books).
@HarperCollins
@richardhanania
Our critic's pick: "The Barbarians Arrive Today: Poems & Prose," by C. P. Cavafy, translated by Evan Jones (Carcanet Classics).
@CCavafy
@EvanPJones
@Carcanet
The English Independents ditched the Presbyterians, the French Jacobins guillotined the Girondins, the Russian Bolsheviks sent the Mensheviks to the gulag. To the immediate right of the extreme Left is often the most dangerous place to be.
Unlike T. S. Eliot, say, who represented high culture in the Anglophone world for three-plus decades, Philip Larkin kept to himself and avoided the plunder and pratfalls of literary celebrity.
“Our young people are not only starved for nature. They are starved for beauty,” Esolen writes, drawing a connection between our shattered social consensus and our wayward styles of music and architecture.
Our critic’s pick: “Confessions of a Heretic, Revised Edition,” by Roger Scruton, Introduced by Douglas Murray (Notting Hill Editions).
@NottingHillEds
@JamesPanero
We’re celebrating
#NationalBowTieDay
@newcriterion
. Retweet for a chance to win a subscription and our custom Japanese silk bow tie by Seigo created in The New Criterion’s colors.
Free speech, the vehicle of reason, is increasingly overwhelmed by narrative, the most potent weapon in the social justice warrior’s arsenal. Today, anti-knowledge is power.
@AndrewCMcCarthy
Our musical culture depends on a radical divide between performer and listener. For us the act of listening takes place in silence, often in the hushed and reverential atmosphere of a concert hall.
@Roger_Scruton
A choir treated Mozart to a motet. Shortly into it, he called out, with wondering joy, “What is this?” It was Bach, of course. After the motet was over, Mozart said, “Now, there is something one can learn from!”
@jaynordlinger
It is the easiest thing in the world to convince someone that Penn Station should be rebuilt. All it takes is a look at a photograph of the original station and then a look at Penn Station today.
Our critic’s pick: “Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism,” by Shadi Bartsch (Princeton University Press).
@ShadiBartsch
@PrincetonUPress
The
#MeToo
movement’s insistence on the fundamental infallibility of the victims of sexual harassment, combined with truculent claims to the higher moral ground, seem reminiscent of Soviet rhetorical extremes of rectitude and wickedness. 🔒
Our critic’s pick: How to Grieve: An Ancient Guide to the Lost Art of Consolation, after M. Tullius Cicero, translated by Michael Fontaine (Princeton University Press).
@PrincetonUPress
Ancient words from real languages mix with Tolkien’s new words from his invented languages to marry the actual with the fantastical, the old with the new.
@NicXTempore
@MorganLibrary
Our critic’s pick: A lecture at the
@frickcollection
“Protecting Europe’s Cultural Treasures: The Frick Art Reference Library, The Monuments Men, and Provenance Research Today.”
@frickcollection
Our critic’s pick: “The Radical Print: Art and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain,” by Esther Chadwick (Yale University Press, July 30).
@yalepress
Sharia supremacism divides the world into areas that submit to Islamic law (Dar al-Islam) and areas of war (Dar al-Harb), where the enemies of Islam—including secular liberals—live and must be opposed until they have submitted. 🔒
@AndrewCMcCarthy