David Frum's Blog, page 46

Why You Should Marry Young

Julia Shaw, who married at 23, defends the decision to start young. My wife & I were about the same age as this couple when we married, and from our vantage point 25 years later, she has it exactly right. This story appears in Slate, but it's no #Slatepitch.

David's Bookclub: It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway

On a visit to China three years ago, I was taken to a hilltop park in a small city in Guangdong province. There stands a museum of the Cultural Revolution. It's the only such monument in the whole vast country of China. Yet even this does better than Russia, where monuments to the victims of communism are few and neglected - and where many local authorities work to restore the toppled symbols of the old regime.

Let's Just Blame Modernity for the Marriage Crisis

Noah Millman of The American Conservative responds to Ross Douthat’s most recent column on same sex marriage.

Your Daily Reminder We Use a Lot of Coal

Drove past a roughly mile-long train loaded with coal this morning.

Legal Outsourcing Within the United States

Americans are right to believe that their jobs are being given to noncitizens.

Why David Cameron's Tories Can't Veer Right

These are dark and precarious times for David Cameron. Consistently behind in the polls and with real economic recovery as distant a prospect as ever, many members of the Conservative family of MPs, activists and pundits have become restive, if not actively mutinous.

Don't Get Too Stressed About the Farm Bubble

Blake Hurst, writing at The American, observes the rapid increase in farm prices:

Karl Marx, Nudnik

Jonathan Freedland reviews a new biography of the cranky German socialist in the New York Times.

Salon to Atheists: Be Nicer to Islam!

Here's a complicated intellectual maneuver: a writer in Salon argues that it's OK to be an atheist, so long as you omit Islam from your list of the religions to which you object. The theory seems to be that it's bigotry to notice when more bad things are done in the name of one religion than in the name of others.

When It's Time to Stop Talking About Politics

For each of us past a certain age, the future holds decline leading to extinction. It's hard for us not to believe - even to wish - that the fate awaiting us as individuals is also the fate awaiting society as a whole. Who wants to think that things might radically improve after our precious selves depart the scene? This psychological fact explains the perpetual allure of prophecies of doom.