[Originally published in 2017 except for the last paragraph] The arc of history sounds a bit pompous, but an ignorance of it is far-reaching in (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
My new Web site
Swallow it whole
02/19/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentPeople like their language like they like their food: easy to chew and swallow without thought or attention. So often I’ve heard or made perfectly (Continue Reading)
No victim – ignore the blood
02/19/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn order to maintain their veneer of innocence, conservatives have turned being a victim into a moral failing. Those brave souls who cry, “I will (Continue Reading)
No handguns
02/18/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentA friend shared with me a set of dormitory rules from Arizona State College (now NAU) in Flagstaff from around the 50s. Students could have (Continue Reading)
How They Dupe the Dupes
02/07/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentA few years back, during the Bush administration, a huge tax break went to the top and a piddling amount went to the rest of (Continue Reading)
A Perfect Mirror
02/07/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhen Trump appeared before his cabinet and congressional Republicans and vilified anyone who dared disagree with him or point out his despicable actions, those present (Continue Reading)
In the DNA
02/04/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentConsider this: put yourself back 20 years telling someone that gay marriage would be legal and common in twenty years. Never happen. Right? But the (Continue Reading)
This is probably happening all over the world….
01/28/2020 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsYesterday I showed my granddaughter a picture, I think it is an advertisement for a film. It showed a scene obviously of the Ancient World (Continue Reading)
The way it really was…..
01/26/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn the wake of the Civil Rights Act passing, some people took it seriously. Here is an example of what happened (from Rick Perlstein’s Before (Continue Reading)
Reverence for the law – but which laws?
01/22/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentChief Justice Roberts is said to revere the law. People who revered the law during the Civil Rights era were appalled by the deliberate law-breaking (Continue Reading)
A Danger To Their Way of Life
01/11/2020 Pat Barrett 5 CommentsSteve Scalise, House Minority Whip, said of Nancy Pelosi’s rush to get the impeachment that “they” seem to think there is a danger to “their (Continue Reading)
The Root of All Our Evil?
01/11/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe New York Review of Books is a treasure trove. In it you find reviews of books on many liberal arts and humanities topics as (Continue Reading)
We All Used To Get Along
01/09/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentThat refrain is heard from the old guys, especially the Seniors like myself, older than the Baby Boomers. They were invoking a time when there (Continue Reading)
What Outrages Conservatives?
12/30/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentLet me count the ways conservatives get outraged and compare them to what outrages liberals. Take language. Conservatives rail about the degeneration of language at (Continue Reading)
The deafness of Whiteness
12/29/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhen I was a child, my mother would sing the songs she had sung as a torch singer in the thirties. Songs like September Song, (Continue Reading)
It is not as simple as it once was
12/26/2019 Pat Barrett 1 CommentIn my blog entry All Liberals Are Communists and All Conservatives Are Fascists, I wrote about giving up on reading the local newspaper back in (Continue Reading)
The Darwin Awards – may Wendy receive one
12/23/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentI am so sick of people’s cruelty I cannot imagine that I have not blogged on The Darwin Awards, the award that celebrates the death (Continue Reading)
A response to Russel Kirk’s Ten Principles
12/22/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn 1986, Russel Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind and long considered the initiator of intellectual conservatism in the U.S., offered ten principles of conservatism (Continue Reading)
They build a world and then go live in it
12/13/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentNow that world will come to them, at least in Britain. With a huge majority, the pro-Brexit people won, just about guaranteeing Britain’s exit of (Continue Reading)
Where Are We Now?
10/19/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentAs long as Trump was smearing the reputations of Black leaders, tearing Hispanic toddlers from their parents’ arms, denying entry to the country based on (Continue Reading)
Umbrage taken
10/05/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentI’ve been meaning to take umbrage for some time, a sort of general umbrage derived from poor thinking, usually other people’s. How about that Charles (Continue Reading)
Gun Control: third step
09/14/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentLaws concerning the ownership, purchase, licensing, and selling of guns, including advertising, have the status of a third rail of politics, like Social Security. There (Continue Reading)
Gun Control Fourth step: road blocks to massacre
09/14/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentOnce we have dispelled the notion that we can identify mentally ill people who are dangerous and the notion that we can erect bunkers and (Continue Reading)