Author: Fred Reed

This morning when I emerged groggily into something resembling consciousness, I didn’t know that I was going to establish the impossibility of ants. Here was a deep philosophical matter, creeping up on me surreptitiously. The dogs as usual came thundering in to see whether we still existed and, having ascertained that we did, offered to have their ears scratched. Such are dogs. Our felines, Cat and Other Cat, sleep on the bed with us—north of the border, there is probably a federal law against this—and also want our attention. Why? They get nothing by sleeping with us. We feed them … Continue reading →

Aaaagh! Enough. I keep reading that I should Honor Our Troops. On airline flights, I am asked to applaud Our Young Men in Uniform. Why, for God’s sake? What have Our Troops done for me except cause me great embarrassment, cost money better spent on anything else, and kill millions of people that I have had no interest in killing? For this I am to thank them? No, they don’t have noble motives. Men join the military because they need a job, because they want money for college or because they are bored or want to prove their manhood or … Continue reading →

On the Unz Review I find a piece by Razib Khan, Can a Religious Person be a Good Scientist? His answer, yes, is inarguable since, as he points out, many good scientists are religious (Newton, a Christian, by most accounts did pretty fair work.) But why should it be necessary to ask such a luminously foolish question? Because we live in luminously foolish times. Mr. Khan cites, not approvingly, a scientist who wanted to have another dismissed from his position for being an evangelical Christian. Why? Well, you see, the manner of thinking of religious people renders them incapable of … Continue reading →

I have just read in Army Times that, to my delight, the Army is making soldiers wear the prettiest red high-heels in the pursuit of gender-equality. Yes. They look like little girls playing with Mommy’s shoes. It has something to do with understanding the psychological problems of women, a matter of importance in combat. It necessarily was done with the approval of the Army’s generals in the Pentagon, particularly Chief of Staff Odierno, since they are in charge of the whole Army shebang. I write them in astonished admiration, thusly: Dear General, I see that on your watch the Army … Continue reading →

Race riot in he South, 1863. Wikipedia: “Rioters subjected black men to the most brutal violence: torture, hanging, and burning.” Eleven were lynched. The Southern mob depicted here were afraid that if the North won the Civil War, freed slaves would take the jobs of whites. Virginian though I am, a son of the Shenandoah, and brought up among the lazy rivers of the state of Marse Bob Lee and Stonewall—rivers where the sun always seemed to shine and you could mostly catch catfish, and almost think that being alive was a good thing until further experience intervened—I have to … Continue reading →

Is it possible for the United States to break up, either de facto or formally? I wonder. The country is not a happy place. Today it is more consciously and resentfully divided, politically, regionally, racially and by sex and class than perhaps ever before. The rich prosper and the middle class sink. Three major racial blocs eye each other with fear and hostility. The hard left controls the media and government against the desires of much of the country, enforcing social engineering that is deeply disliked. Feminists make war on men, and destroy the schools and universities. Washington is widely … Continue reading →

I see with no surprise that Washington is stepping up its campaign to censor the internet. It had to come, and will succeed.  It will put paid forever to America’s flirtation with freedom. The country was never really a democracy, meaning a polity in which final power rested with the people. The voters have always been too remote from the levers of power to have much influence. Yet for a brief window of time there actually was freedom of a sort. With the censorship of the net—it will be called “regulation”—the last hope of retaining former liberty will expire. Over … Continue reading →

Many Americans wonder why the US military has such a dismal record of failure in its wars in Moslem territories. Do we not have the most modern forces in the world? How can a force armed with fighter-bombers, B1s, night-vision goggles, helicopter gunships, heavy armor, and advanced remotely-piloted vehicles lose routinely to lightly-armed goatherders? Journalistic old-hands in the regions, men who have spent decades following the wars and the complex and shifting alliances, say quietly that the cause is American ignorance of both the lands and the people. Virtually no one in the United States has any notion of the … Continue reading →