Something Very Strange Is Going On Here

This is an image that heads up a short essay by Ben Stein, a sensible and normally mild-mannered man who usually does commercials and says funny things. This is worrisome.

We Are All Fascists Now

Whatever we do, I suspect that times will be tough in the coming years. Being of a certain age and historically minded I think about 1964 and Lyndon Johnson, and then 1972 and Richard Nixon, and then 1976 and Jimmy Carter (we should have known better, how could someone calling himself "Jimmy" do well as President); and then 2000 and George W. Bush. Apart from the last, these guys had a good deal of support from many of us. And yet look what happened, disaster always waits in the wings in Washington.

I must re-read Huxley's Brave New World. A feminine form of totalitarianism. How lovely.

I always thought Huxley's title came from Shakespeare's Miranda in The Tempest, but Wikipedia set me straight when it points out a poem from Rudyard Kipling in 1919 with the following lines:

"And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his
sins. . ."

Word Games

You could have saved yourself $35! by reading today's Wall Street Journal. Matthew Connelly's Fatal Misconception has been reviewed in the WSJ with the headline The War Against Fertility, reminding the reader of the failure of other wars, like against poverty and now against global warming. I particularly like the connections the book draws between the early 20th century eugenics movement and the later evolution of Fascism—still going strong in, for example, the Democratic Party of today.

Sorry, couldn't resist borrowing the image above from the review in the International Herald Tribune.