Rod Dreher's Blog, page 233

Going To Poland

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Readers, I will soon be headed to Poland to do research for my upcoming book on the lessons we in the US and Europe have to learn from the experiences of those who resisted Communism. I will be in Warsaw from July 5-9, and in Krakow from the 9th through the 12th (I will actually be in Krakow through July 15, but will be involved in a seminar from the 12th onward). I am thrilled to be going for the first time to the country of Wojtyla, Milosz, and Walesa.

I am working with Polish contacts to set up interviews during this time, and indeed already have some set up, but I would like to reach out to Polish readers, and readers who know Poland, to ask for advice. Who should I talk to? What should I see while in the country? Remember, the book will be focused on the elements of the anti-communist dissident experience that help us understand and confront the soft totalitarianism emerging today. If you’ve read Ryszard Legutko’s great book The Demon In Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations In Free Societies, you know exactly what I’m talking about (and yes, I will be interviewing Prof. Legutko in Krakow).

Please let me know what you think, either in the comments, or by writing me privately at rod — at — amconmag — dot — com. Due to the volume of mail I receive, I can’t guarantee that I will respond to all e-mails personally, but I will read them.

UPDATE: Sorry! I meant July, not June — I’ve corrected the post.

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America To Weimar Germany: ‘Hold My Beer’

Our deranged media continue their propaganda offensive. Here is a Houston TV station celebrating the sexualization of a little boy, whose parents ought to be ashamed of themselves. We have completely lost our moral minds.

This is true:

I long thought the sexualization of little girls in beauty pageants had become gross, and until recently there seemed to be a growing consensus about that. Now the sexualization of little boys dressed as girls is a cause of great celebration. Count me out. https://t.co/j7nVQkRJEX

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) June 22, 2019

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Meanwhile, a cosmetic surgeon in Baltimore is purportedly offering to lop off women’s breasts — including the breasts of teenage girls — at a discount, to celebrate Pride month:

1. Latest leak from our source in the affirming parents Facebook group: Dr. Beverly Fischer in Baltimore, MD is offering a $750 discount on double mastectomies if booked during Pride month, according to this mother. pic.twitter.com/Od9w0TFXPp

— 4thWaveNow (@4th_WaveNow) June 22, 2019

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No kidding — the surgeon tweeted this out herself:

June is PRIDE MONTH! Celebrate with a $750 discount on our Top Surgery procedure! #plasticsurgery #cosmeticsurgery #genderaffirmation #gendertransition #FTM #DrBevsBoys pic.twitter.com/6tuPy8tl1v

— Dr. Beverly Fischer (@BeverlyAFischer) June 7, 2019

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Discount breast-lopping to celebrate a holiday — is that not the most American thing ever? And you used to think two-for-one radial tire sales for Washington’s Birthday were trashy! Can’t you just feel the pride?

We are a sick civilization that deserves to be punished.

UPDATE: Another, very different but still disgusting way we treat children:

A chaotic scene of sickness and filth is unfolding in an overcrowded border station in Clint, Tex., where hundreds of young people who have recently crossed the border are being held, according to lawyers who visited the facility this week. Some of the children have been there for nearly a month.

Children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears, are caring for infants they’ve just met, the lawyers said. Toddlers without diapers are relieving themselves in their pants. Teenage mothers are wearing clothes stained with breast milk.

Most of the young detainees have not been able to shower or wash their clothes since they arrived at the facility, those who visited said. They have no access to toothbrushes, toothpaste or soap.

“There is a stench,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, one of the lawyers who visited the facility. “The overwhelming majority of children have not bathed since they crossed the border.”

More:

The Justice Department’s lawyer, Sarah Fabian, argued that the settlement agreement did not specify the need to supply hygienic items and that, therefore, the government did not need to do so.

“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket?” Judge William Fletcher asked Ms. Fabian. “I find that inconceivable that the government would say that is safe and sanitary.”

Our government doing this to children. Little children. Even if you support strict border enforcement (as I do), this is unconscionable.

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Tucker Carlson Saved America (At Least Temporarily)

Um, wow. From this morning’s New York Times:

He heard from his generals and his diplomats. Lawmakers weighed in and so did his advisers. But among the voices that rang powerfully for President Trump was that of one of his favorite Fox News hosts: Tucker Carlson.

While national security advisers were urging a military strike against Iran, Mr. Carlson in recent days had told Mr. Trump that responding to Tehran’s provocations with force was crazy. The hawks did not have the president’s best interests at heart, he said. And if Mr. Trump got into a war with Iran, he could kiss his chances of re-election goodbye.

This is true, actually. The Republican president and the Republican Party led this country into a disastrous and unnecessary war with Iraq. One reason we have a Republican president now is because Trump ran against that appalling record. If Trump throws it away to start what will surely be a vastly more complicated and devastating war with Iran — my God, the Republican Party will deserve to be reduced to silt. More:

The concerns that Mr. Trump heard from Mr. Carlson reflected that part of the presidential id that has always hesitated at pulling the trigger. Belligerent and confrontational as he is in his public persona, Mr. Trump has at times pulled back from the use of force, convinced that America has wasted too many lives and too much money in pointless Middle East wars and wary of repeating what he considers the mistakes of his predecessors.

As Mr. Carlson and other skeptics have argued, a strike against Iran could easily spiral into a full-fledged war without easy victory. That, Mr. Trump was told, was everything he ran against. And so the president struggled into the early evening, committed to taking action to demonstrate resolve right up until the moment he decided against it and called off the warplanes and missile launchers.

And:

The decision made, the military ordered ships and planes in the region to stand down. At the White House, Mr. Trump turned on his television to watch the opening of Mr. Carlson’s 8 p.m. show, where he heard what surely must have sounded like vindication. Onscreen, Mr. Carlson declared that “foreign wars have ended in dismal failure for the United States.”

While no decision had been announced yet, Mr. Carlson praised Mr. Trump for resisting military intervention in Iran. “The same people who lured us into the Iraq quagmire 16 years ago are demanding a new war, this one with Iran,” he said. “The president, to his great credit, appears to be skeptical of this — very skeptical.”

But read on to see what Sean Hannity said after Tucker’s show.

We have come to the point at which pretty much the only thing standing between America and a new war is a prime time conservative talk show host. Watch the key Tucker broadcast here. It’s important:

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View From Your Table

Marylebone, London, England

Avocado toast with poached egg. Look how orange the yolk is! That photo is unenhanced. I tasted my wife’s breakfast at Ole & Steen, and repented of all the ugly things I said in the past about the Millennials. These avocado-toast eaters truly are the Greatest Generation.

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The Joy Of Blighty

Hi readers, I apologize for being incommunicado. I went from a no-WiFi situation in Cambridge to one in our Airbnb rental in London that is to WiFi what the Trabant was to automobile excellence. I’m settled down in the flat tonight. The bags are all packed for tomorrow’s journey home. We’re all wo’ slap out from our vacation, which was wonderful, but you know how it is: there comes at time when everybody’s ready to go home and see the dog. I am going to try to post this tonight (if you see it, I will have been successful), but we have a long wait at Heathrow tomorrow — have to be out of the Airbnb earlyish — so I anticipate being able to write at length about some of the things I’ve seen, heard, and done these past few days. For now, I just didn’t want you to think that I’ve dropped off the face of the earth.

[Now I’m writing this on Friday afternoon from a terminal lounge in Heathrow, having completely failed to upload it last night on the Trabant WiFi.]

So. On Wednesday morning, we woke up in Cambridge, had breakfast, then met our old friend Prof. Imre Leader, a Trinity College mathematician, for a tour of the college. I have known Imre since the fall of 1985. He is one of those naturally joyful people around whom it is impossible to be cross, despairing, or un-merry in any way. It’s a grace, really. He loves pure mathematics, Bob Dylan, Othello (the game), and LSU football. And he loves Trinity College, and delighted in showing it to me and my family.

After going through the Great Gate and into the Great Court, I pointed out to my son Matt, who wants to train to be an historian of science, the rooms where Isaac Newton lived. Newton is the greatest of Trinity’s alumni, and his presence is still very much felt. That image above is of a statue in the Trinity chapel. To be so close to where Newton lived and moved and thought is thrilling!

We walked across the well-manicured grass of the Great Court, which we were allowed to do only because we were led by a Fellow. Ha ha, haters!

Imre led us to his office to drop our bags. Along the way, he pointed out a tiny patch of ground next to an office building. Tropical plants were growing there. “Do you know why?” he asked. Microclimate? said Julie. Yes, said Imre, but what’s interesting is how the microclimate was created: a while back, someone wondered if the hot air from the laundry vent on the ground would make it warm enough to grow tropical plants there. They were right! Behold, the Tropical Garden of Trinity College, Cambridge:

We eventually made our way to the dining hall. Here’s a view of High Table:

I ate there once, a decade ago, as the guest of a Fellow. It was so Old World. Everyone rose to say a blessing in Latin, then sat to eat.

Eventually we made our way to the Wren Library, in which photography was forbidden. But what treasures they have there! We saw Newton’s own personal copy of his Principia Mathematica, as well as a pocket ledger in his own handwriting. We saw Wittgenstein’s notebook. We saw an 8th-century copy of St. Paul’s letters. That sort of thing.

Imre walked us over to King’s College Chapel next door for a quick look, and then, on the way back, through Trinity Hall, a Cambridge college that is next door to Trinity College, but is not the same thing. Trinity Hall was Stephen Hawking’s college when he was an undergraduate. As we were leaving, someone approached to ask if I was Rod Dreher. Turns out it was Taym Saleh, a history PhD student and a reader of this blog:

It’s so lovely to meet people like this, and in the unlikeliest places. I introduced Taym to my family (whose photos I never put on the blog, fyi) and to Imre. Then we soldiered on back to Trinity. Here’s Imre with my son Lucas:

After gathering our bags, we just had time for a quick lunch at The Eagle, the 17th-century pub where James Watson and Francis Crick partly worked out the double-helix model of DNA. It was at The Eagle where Crick, on February 28, 1953, arose and told the lunch crowd that he and Watson had “discovered the secret of life.” Here’s a VFYT; yeah, I had the burger, and it was really tasty:

Cambridge, England

On the walk back to the hotel, I pointed out to the children this abominable building, the Cambridge University Centre. What a deranged poverty of imagination architectural Brutalism is! It’s the only form of architecture that makes me angry, really angry. That Cambridge is home to more than a few of these horrible buildings is a scandal. But this is the worst, I think. It looks like a lean-to built by Hillbilly Stalin:

(Avert your gaze)

Another Cambridge friend drove us down to London, where we took up residence in the Airbnb flat in Marylebone. It was a wonderful place; the only problem was the WiFi, which might have been a blessing, actually, in that it compelled me to stay moving. After a short time, we dressed for an evening at the theater. Our friend Wendell Pierce is starring in a massively praised revival of Death Of A Salesman, at the Young Vic. He invited us to come see him portray Willy Loman; this, I think, is the first major production in which the Loman family is black. We were thrilled, of course. For my kids, this was their first experience of professional theater. Can you imagine your introduction to theater being this play, in a London production that has been praised to the skies, starring a great actor who also happens to be a family friend?

God was smiling on our family, that’s for sure. A selfie before the show:

I am going to write something separately about the play when I’m back home, but let me just note here that it is electrifying. I was sitting next to my 19-year-old son Matthew, who whispered into my ear at some point, “I’ve got to go to the theater more. This is incredible!” Julie was sitting elsewhere in the theater with the two others, but in the cab home, they talked and talked and talked about the play, its meaning, and Mr. Wendell’s performance.

Mr. Wendell, by the way, burst out of the stage doors, took a photo with us, and as we prepared to say goodbye, he said, “You hungry?” Then he led us across the street to have dinner. He wouldn’t let us treat him, either. He said, “You’re family. Mama wouldn’t like it if I let family come all this way from Louisiana to see me onstage, and me not buy you dinner.” The kids were so, so thrilled by all this. An older gentleman having dinner at a table near us came over with his party on the way out, and identified himself as the manager of an A-list Hollywood director. He complimented Wendell at length on the performance, and said he would reach out to the director to tell him how much he had enjoyed the play. The kids were goggle-eyed. The manager leaned over and said to them, “You’re very lucky” — meaning to be friends with a man as talented as Wendell.

Which was stating the obvious, but it was good for them to hear it.

Like I said, we talked about the play all the way back to our flat in the taxi. By the time we got home, I realized that Wendell Pierce and his cast mates had lit a fire inside my children. They now see what live theater can do — and only live theater can do — and are hungry for more. I would not be surprised if this turns out to be the most lasting legacy of this vacation in England.

Anyway, look, if you’re headed to London, and you can manage to get tickets to Death Of A Salesman, don’t you dare miss it. It’s moving over to the West End in October, and will be there through January 4. Tickets are on sale now. 

We didn’t get home till well after midnight, and we were all glowing. Julie and I made the call that we wouldn’t get up early the next morning and drive ourselves like crazy people to go see this and that. Before leaving home for England, we had imagined that we would spend our one full day in London going to the British Museum, and then down to Westminster Abbey. But we were late to rise, and decided to take it easy. We had a leisurely breakfast at the Marylebone outpost of a Danish bakery chain called Ole & Steen. Their scones are glorious, and so are the seeded rye buns, which you can get with salty Danish butter and cheese:

Marylebone, London, England

After breakfast, we ambled over to the local outpost of Daunt Books, an independent London bookstore that specializes in travel books. According to its Wikipedia page, a former London banker named James Daunt bought the old Edwardian bookshop and revived it. What’s unique about this store — at least the Marylebone one; I don’t know about the others — is that it’s organized by country. So, if you’re interested in books about, say, Germany, you can find both fiction and non-fiction titles in that section.

I was interested in finding titles related to the experiences of Eastern Europeans under Communism. There was so much! I talked to a sales clerk, who was — steady yourself, reader — knowledgeable about and conversant in the literature of the former Soviet bloc. (Turns out she also attends Holy Trinity Brompton.) I can’t remember the last time I shopped at a bookstore and had that kind of conversation with a clerk. It was like walking into a tailor and ordering a bespoke suit, or something. Here’s a look at Daunt Books’s interior from the first floor:

I didn’t want to leave. My daughter Nora and I bought so many books that they gave us a free Daunt Books canvas bag, which Nora now treats as others would regard an Hermès birkin. As we were checking out, I was talking with Jack, behind the counter, about the demise of bookstores. I lamented that even Barnes & Noble looks like it’s going into the rock-bottom remainder stack, given that a hedge fund is buying it.

“Well, this might actually be good news for Barnes & Noble,” said Jack. He explained that Waterstones, a dying bookstore chain in Britain, had been bought by the same hedge fund, who handed over management to none other than James Daunt, the founder of that brilliant little bookstore in Marylebone. Daunt turned around Waterstones, and now, the hedge fund will be turning over B&N to Daunt’s leadership. 

This is fantastic news! If B&N can go from being a blandoid tchotchke emporium to having a selection of titles that might actually surprise and bewitch you, like the Daunt store in Marylebone does, well, we readers are in for good times ahead. Thanks, Jack!

And:

After Daunt, we walked over to the British Museum, where the kids were especially interested in seeing Egyptian artifacts and Greek statuary. One great and unanticipated benefit of having children who are classically educated is that they kept telling their father to slow down, to let them linger over the Greek stuff. I took a photo of Nora in front of the Elgin Marbles, and at her request, e-mailed it on the spot to the headmaster of her school.

It would not have been kind to the kids to have stayed in the museum all day, given that they wanted to do some shopping, so we spent much of the afternoon doing exactly that, ending up at Fortnum & Mason’s down by Piccadilly. (Now that I’m sitting in a Heathrow departure lounge, I regret not buying the Welsh rarebit — which is not, alas, available in the airport Fortnum’s.)

We were home early-ish, but happy to be, because we were all tired. I went to the nearest grocery store to buy bread, cheese, and cold cuts for dinner. I tried to book a car to take us to Heathrow — for a family of five, it was more cost-effective to do that than go to Paddington to take the Heathrow Express — but it turns out that there were none available, anywhere. Royal Ascot is upon London, and it’s hopeless to try to book a car. Fortunately, Uber was able to accommodate us. That settled, we packed at leisure, then went to bed happy.

Julie and I woke up early and headed to breakfast at Ole & Steen, so I could buy some rolls to bring home. The Uber driver came on time, and off we went to the airport. In about an hour, we will board the flight home to New Orleans.

As I’ve said, I will have a lot to blog about from this trip — about religion, culture, conservatism, and the like — and I will probably start rolling those posts out over the weekend. At this farewell to England, I want simply to express how grateful we all are for the many, many kindnesses shown to us by English friends, old and new alike, and by English people. We Americans have so much to be thankful for in the life and history of this wonderful country, Great Britain. Given the reading and television habits of my family, English culture is even more a part of our lives than it otherwise would be. It was such a feast to be here with my children, and to introduce them directly to the joys of Blighty (and some of her pains, too). Thanks, old girl. May there always be a You.

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Postcard From Cambridge

Hello from Cambridge! I have so much to tell you, but no opportunity to tell it. Wifi unavailable at the hotel last night. So it will have to wait until we’re in London tonight. I’m very briefly in a coffee shop on King’s Parade, and wanted to check in.

The shot above is from a punt in the River Cam yesterday; that’s the King’s College chapel in the background. When we arrived late yesterday morning, Julie ran off to pay a professional visit to Heritage School; the kids and I did a little bit of shopping, and then met theologian James Orr, who teaches philosophy of religion on the Divinity faculty here. He graduated from St. John’s College, and as a graduate, had the privilege of taking the kids and me up to the top of St. John’s Tower, the highest place in the town. We had to ascend an incredibly narrow, winding staircase. It felt like trying to push out of a Thai cave. At last we emerged on top, and had marvelous views of the flat countryside all around.

Here are James and Self, on the roof:

When we descended, we crossed the street to the old Round Church to visit the Cambridge Scriptorium.  I will tell you more about this incredible place in a separate post, when I have more time. It’s a Benedict Option refuge in the heart of this great medieval university.

Then we said goodbye to James, and met John Shelton Reed, the great sociologist, barbecue expert, and friend of TAC, at the Maypole pub for lunch. Afterward, John gave us a short walking tour of Cambridge; he’s a fellow of St. Catharine’s College. Here’s John, Julie, and Self in the courtyard of St. Catharine’s:

Again, I have a lot more to tell you, but we are about to take a private tour of Trinity College, led by a friend who is on faculty there. After lunch, we’ll be off to London. I trust there will be wifi in our Airbnb there. More later.

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Tea With Roger Scruton

My old St. Francisville friend Laura Klein Croft — that’s her on the left — drove me up to rural Wiltshire this afternoon to spend some time interviewing Sir Roger Scruton for my upcoming book on the lessons we in the 21st century West have to learn from those who suffered under 20th century Soviet communism. Sir Roger and other academics from the free world joined with Czech colleagues in the 1980s to start an underground university (he talked about that in this interview with Czech radio), so he knows very well how much we have to learn from those who struggled with Communism — and prevailed.

I’m not going to use any of the interview in this space. Maybe after I transcribe it, if there’s anything that I can’t use in the book, I’ll post it here. Mostly I wanted to say in this space how grateful I am to have spent time with him in his library at the farm, drinking tea and talking about culture, civilization, Communism, and the way we live now. It was encouraging to hear him say how much he believes we need this book. He was a gracious host, and let me say that Roger Scruton lives exactly like you want Roger Scruton to live: surrounded by books, a well-used armchair, a piano, a worn Oriental carpet, a Labrador retriever, chickens in the tall grass and a dearly loved wife bringing a tray of milky tea to the philosopher and his guests in his home office — a converted 18th century barn — filled with cool, clean country air and a spirit of tranquility, modesty, and contentment. For me, it was a presentiment of paradise. I am grateful.

Oh, and I can’t be positive, because I only glanced at it, but I think that’s a portrait of Charles II above the crossbeam. Please visit Amazon’s Roger Scruton page. Buy anything, and be delighted and edified. You won’t regret it.

Now, as I write, it is dusk, and the cattle are lowing on the hillside behind Laura’s house in Hampshire. Laura has been the most generous host. One of my children is crying — one of the boys — overcome by sorrow that we have to say farewell to this good place and these good people.

It’s grace, all of it. On to Cambridge tomorrow for a short visit.

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The Kafkaesque Hell Of Hedge End

A reminder: the most frustrating day in England in the summer time is better than the best day in Louisiana in the summer time … BECAUSE AIN’T NOBODY HOT!

I told myself that after my son Matt and I had a comedy of errors that didn’t seem to be so funny at the time. The whole family was planning to go down to Portsmouth today, but Matt and I first had to go to Brockenhurst to return his rental bike. Laura drove us up to Winchester to catch the train. It should have been a fairly quick trip down to the New Forest, then back up towards Southampton and Ensleigh, then down the other side of the Solent to Portsmouth. Easy-peasy, right?

Not if you went up on the wrong end of a splitting train. Twice. And have to make your way back from Hedge End, twice. Hedge End! That name shall live on in infamy in the annals of Dreher fambly vacation stories. By the time we had returned the bike to its people, we had wasted a couple of hours. We saw too that it would take 1 hr 44 m to get to Portsmouth from there, and we would arrive just in time for Julie and the other two to be catching a train for home.

“Let’s go to Winchester instead,” we decided, thinking somehow that Julie and the kids would all be converging there to be picked up by our hostess. So, Matt and I did just that. We visited a bookstore, ate late lunch, shopped around a bit, called on a pub, and then pootled down the High Street towards the bus station.

Turns out that the bus line we needed to get back to the village doesn’t run on Sunday. The train service on a Sunday is highly convoluted, would have taken two hours, and cost 35 pounds — only five pounds less than a taxi. We took the taxi. It was pretty much a botched day, but … England is still luminous for all that. And I enjoyed being with Matt. We are so much alike. Here is a VFYT from a coffee shop on the High Street in Winchester. He is sitting across from me. He’s reading about Chernobyl; I’m reading The Gulag Archipelago. He’s wearing a t-shirt from his favorite album of one of his favorite bands … which is my favorite album of that same band, also on of my favorites.

Winchester, England

And here is our dinner at our hostess’s lovely home.

East Meon, Hampshire, England

Tomorrow, I get up to Wiltshire to spend a few hours interviewing Sir Roger Scruton for my upcoming book. Julie and kids off to do fun things around the area — I think they might be headed up to Oxford. Then, we all go up to Cambridge on Tuesday.

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The Owl & The Raspberry

My daughter Nora took this shot through the kitchen window (hence a bit of glare fuzzing up the detail in part of the photo) of the house where we are staying in rural Hampshire. That’s a barn owl hunting at dusk. Heavenly, is it not?

It was a quiet Saturday here in the country. Julie and two of the kids went with our hostess Laura up to Chawton House, where Jane Austen lived. Lucas and I poked around the village, but mostly stayed close to home and marveled over how wonderful it is not to be hot. Later, Matt went for a long bike ride, Julie slept off remaining jet lag, and the kids and I went with Laura to the local beer festival. Nora and Lucas tried their hands at hatchet-throwing, as one does:

Lucas was pretty good at it, as you can see.

We arrived just in time to hear the last few songs of the Southampton Ukulele Jam, which is exactly the band you want to perform at a village beer festival. Not a great shot, I admit — it doesn’t begin to capture the exuberant dynamism of this band — but here they are playing the Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?”:

It was cold and wet out there — and we loved it! It felt like a late autumn day in Louisiana, which is my favorite time of the year. But eventually the kids, who weren’t drinking one of the 50 or so local ales, got bored, so we came home. Laura grilled steaks and burgers for us, and we had a wonderful meal in her warm kitchen. She was preparing it when she spotted the owl on the hunt, and called us all over to the window.

After dinner, we retired into the living room to plan tomorrow’s adventure. Laura poured a thimbleful of this cordial made by a family living nearby, in their home, and retailed locally:

As a rule, I don’t care for sweet drinks. Laura said that she doesn’t either — but this is special. It’s made from fresh raspberries from the New Forest macerating in gin. It’s sweet, but it has a sourness that gives it a lovely balance.

She was right! I drank three thimblefuls. It was only 18 percent alcohol, so very light, but also mouth-puckering.

Here’s the website for Dampney’s; I don’t know if it will do anybody in America any good, alas. I’m going to try to get a bottle of the raspberry gin drink to take home.

Unfortunately, the white owl stays in England. You can’t have everything.

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The Commissar Comes For Murray

Watch this clip. In it, a Scottish high school teacher disciplines a student whom he has kicked out of class for insisting that there are only two genders. The authoritarian madness is on full display! This exchange is for the ages:

Teacher: “I am not putting my opinion out. I am stating what is national school authority policy, okay?”

Student: “But it’s not scientific whatsoever.”

Teacher: “Not every policy is scientific, Murray!”

From Roger Scruton’s Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands: Thinkers Of The New Left:

I find it fascinating that the commissar in this episode secretly filmed above is not some pierced and tattooed woke Millennial, but a middle-aged guy who looks like Matt Foley, the motivational speaker.

UPDATE: Folks, when they use “gender” in this context, they are not talking about nouns. They are talking about sex.

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