Recently, I was challenged by a friend to defend my conviction that our friendship would last beyond college. That she should seriously question my strongly-held conviction was almost unbelievable to me, which unbelief I’m sure I conveyed in my ensuing profusion of emotional and only quasi-logical explanations. But my exasperated response was apparently insufficient for...
Category: Opinions
Post
An ode to Ramen
When I was 7, I dreamed of becoming the next Rachel Ray. Dutifully watching the Cooking Channel every time I visited my grandmother (who had cable television), I imagined myself one day in the distant future, skillfully combining ingredients and producing swoon-worthy flavors à la Gordon Ramsay. Until then, I could make Ramen. At 7,...
Post
‘Safe spaces’ crowd out free discourse
The primary beneficiaries of free speech are shouting it down. Students benefit most from free discourse, their education itself dependent on the reasonable exchange of ideas. Students are protesting on university campuses across the nation, shrieking about “safe spaces.” They claim a right to retreat into a place (be it physical, ideological, social) where they...
Post
France has a chance to redeem modern war
In response to the horrifying murder of 129 civilians in Paris last Friday, France must re-civilize western war making. The Islamic State claimed responsibility Saturday for the coordinated strikes by eight operatives, describing the attack as retaliation for French military action in Syria. The same day, French President Francois Hollande called Friday’s massacre “an act...
Post
Conservatism and black America
Only five years ago, white America still held the comfortable belief that racism, the grimmest specter of our nation’s past, was finally taking its last feeble gasps. Since then, however, that specter has come roaring back in a barrage of napalm-grade controversies, from Trayvon Martin to Yale University, that have punched gaping holes in our...