Your conversation with David Brooks resurrected old figures and events and then I realized I am 20 years older than either of you so while (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
They’re catching up to me
02/09/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentRecently I’ve heard Francis Fukuyama refer to the Libertarian underpinnings of the Project 2025 movement and even mention Integralism. Others are now seeing the involvement (Continue Reading)
Lose? Are You Crazy?
08/21/2024 Pat Barrett Add CommentHere is the essence of why the democratic principle that says you must be willing to lose does not work for conservatives: they believe they (Continue Reading)
The real shift
03/27/2024 Pat Barrett Add CommentFor all my life I and my friends have gently ridiculed conservatives and their “bible based” crack-pot ideas about lost tribes and the naked greed (Continue Reading)
How does Trump survive?
03/08/2024 Pat Barrett Add CommentI don’t mean politically; I mean mentally. Here’s an example: most observers with more than 2 intact brain cells noticed in Trump’s quoting of a (Continue Reading)
Caste and cast
01/14/2024 Pat Barrett Add CommentAn unlikely movie: Caste, Isabel Wilkerson’s stupendous book on caste in America (and elsewhere), subtitled “The Source of Our Discontent.” How do you make a (Continue Reading)
What bugs you most about MAGA people?
01/10/2024 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsIs it possibly that they go on the internet, read whatever strikes their interest and supports their presuppositions and then think it’s true? In another (Continue Reading)
The key to culture is not language
01/07/2024 Pat Barrett Add CommentI just got an offer of tutoring a kid in Latin. It’s for pay and the kid lives just down the street so I’m sure (Continue Reading)
I’ve got my pride
12/05/2023 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy wife tells me how the White folk driving through Phoenix and running out of gas and money would come to the Black churches for (Continue Reading)
Complete with veiled women
11/17/2023 Pat Barrett Add CommentI am still hearing about those caravans headed toward the southern border of the U.S. (which I consider starting at the Mason-Dixon Line). So as (Continue Reading)
When is it an attack and when is it evidence?
08/20/2023 Pat Barrett 1 CommentIn a blog entry here on another topic, I came across this that I wrote: ” I’ve come to realize that ’attacking’ is another word (Continue Reading)
Denazification of America: the second failure
05/17/2023 Pat Barrett Add CommentShelby Foote, the Mississippian who wrote a very readable history of the Civil War, describes the reaction of Southerners to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on p (Continue Reading)
Left or Right?
02/15/2023 Pat Barrett Add CommentNo, not my politics; we know where they lie. It’s handedness. I’ve always known my handedness as “mixed dominance,” doing some things only with the (Continue Reading)
Communication up close
09/14/2022 Pat Barrett Add CommentRuby Payne something I have found true in the microcosm of my personal life, that poor families use fewer nouns and more pronouns. After 58 (Continue Reading)
Language hypocrisy
08/31/2022 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhen we speak of contractions in English like ‘we would have’ reduced to ‘we’d’ve’ the language guardians and scolds label that ‘improper’, ‘slang’, ‘sloppy’, and (Continue Reading)
Why SOME sports fans belong in the dregs of humanity category
07/29/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentFull disclosure: I have never been a sports fan. My wife, my son, so many people in my life are “avid” sports fans (like a (Continue Reading)
Current Health of Me
05/22/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentSince my last post to this topic I have been on a very steady exercise program, actually two programs, one CORE I do at home (Continue Reading)
Up to here
01/16/2021 Pat Barrett 8 CommentsMaybe we felt bad about Trump supporters and Trump voters being ridiculed by the leading-lights of the major culture, esp for thinking they are the (Continue Reading)
How Mass Media Affects Mass Man
12/26/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentThis from Meacham’s Soul of America quoting Richard Hofstadter: “…. growth of the mass media of communication and their use in politics have brought politics (Continue Reading)
More evidence of the efficacy of repetition in input
12/06/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentAn article on child acquisition of the ergative forms in Basque finds that Basque children receiving bilingual input, i.e. two different languages being used in (Continue Reading)
Signs of acquisition
11/19/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentTracking one student has its advantages. When you are working with a group of students, it’s hard to notice what each one is acquiring. My (Continue Reading)
Culture gets passed on, like it or not
07/05/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn these pages I often stress the persistence of African cultural traits in the New World. Those traits came from Africans brought here during the (Continue Reading)
Nyah’s Lesson Dec. 11 #
05/23/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentVous allez ecrire des notes. Why do I have to take notes?* She picked a gender neutral name for a character who was the object (Continue Reading)