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Frank Advice From A Close Friend

There was, I can testify, a lot more drinking in Washington, D.C., before May 15, 1978. That was the date, through the grace of God, that I had my last drink of beer or booze or wine. Previously, I had given up drinking at different times, for Lent or to lose weight (a waist is a terrible thing to mind), always to return for another round. But what changed my ways — beyond a miserable hangover while playing hours of duck, duck, goose with a dozen happy kids at my daughter Amy’s sixth birthday party — was the eloquent example of my very close friend and favorite ex-drinking ...

Why People Will Leave, And Stay In, Big Cities

The coronavirus has rearranged American life. Mask wearing and social distancing is still required in the stores, gyms and restaurants now open, or set to be, across the nation. But what about the big, crowded cities? New Orleans, Chicago, San Francisco and, of course, New York have become the virus hotspots mainly because they put people in close quarters with other breathing people. That’s how infection spreads. In hard-hit New York City, residents of means grabbed their kids and left for second homes or moved in with family outside town. Though stay-at-home orders have done a ...

Certain Victor In The Pandemic War

“War is the health of the state,” wrote the progressive Randolph Bourne during the First World War, after which he succumbed to the Spanish flu. America’s war on the coronavirus pandemic promises to be no exception to the axiom. However long this war requires, the gargantuan state will almost surely emerge triumphant. Currently, the major expenditures of the U.S. government, as well as a growing share of total federal spending, are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. None of these programs will be curtailed or reduced this year or next. And if the Democrats win in ...

Puzzling Over COVID-19 Deaths

The numbers are preliminary, but it seems that African Americans are dying from COVID-19 at alarming rates. In Louisiana, for instance, blacks represent 70% of the dead but only 33% of the population. In Michigan, blacks comprise 33% of the infected, but 40% of the fatalities. This has occasioned an outpouring of analysis suggesting that racism is to blame. Racism and discrimination have unarguably left grave traces in the lives of African Americans, but the rush to identify racism as the cause of this particular disparity may be too pat. CNN, like many others, cited lower levels of ...

‘The Bill Of Rights Is Above My Pay Grade’

The loss of liberty is at hand. Every day in America, mayors and governors — not one of whom is constitutionally or lawfully empowered to author laws and assign punishments for their noncompliance — are imposing new standards of behavior that nullify liberty in the name of public safety. I have been writing about this since the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the United States — about the consequences to personal liberty in a free society that are inevitable when those in whose hands we have reposed the Constitution for safekeeping have failed us. Their failures have also been a ...

America: Home Of The Expert

This virus crisis has wiped out jobs, yes. But it has also created a lot of work for experts. Why everywhere you turn there is another expert. Usually on television. We have experts in drugs and making and distributing ventilators. We have experts in when to open up and close down cities and states. We have so many experts we could lend them out to countries by the dozens. I thought we had used up this year’s quota for child experts after the Swedish teenager came to town. She gave us her expert opinion. About how climate change is going to scorch half of us. And drown the rest of ...