Magazine April 5, 2010, Issue

Adolescent Thinking

‘I  see some young people in the audience,” said President Obama in Ohio the other day. Not that young. For he assured them that, under Obamacare, they’d be eligible to remain on their parents’ health coverage until they were 26.

The audience applauded.

Why?

Because, as the politicians say, “it’s about the future of all our children.” And in the future we’ll all be children. For most of human history, across all societies, a 26-year-old has been considered an adult, and not starting out but well into adulthood. Not someone who remains a dependent of his parents, but someone who might well have

Mark Steyn is an international bestselling author, a Top 41 recording artist, and a leading Canadian human-rights activist.

In This Issue

Articles

Politics & Policy

A Little Work

In Hollywood, when we say that someone has had “some good work done,” we’re talking about eye lifts.          And lip implants, tummy tucks, cheek pulls, lipo, chemical ...
Politics & Policy

Divided by an Ocean

Once again — the fifth time in recent years, by my count — the so-called Anglo-American special relationship is being dismissed as a self-destructive illusion (self-destructive for Britain, that is) ...

Features

Politics & Policy

Break Up the Banks

Big banks are bad for free markets. Far from being engines of free enterprise, they are conducive to what might be called “crony capitalism,” “corporatism,” or, in Jonah Goldberg’s provocative ...

Books, Arts & Manners

Politics & Policy

Fugitive Pleasures

There were many choice sentences in the disgraceful petition that circulated among the movie industry’s elite following Roman Polanski’s long-overdue arrest, demanding the confessed sex offender’s release and pledging him ...
Country Life

Can I Help You?

We have a service economy, in part, because we no longer have servants. Carriage maintenance happened in the stables, amongst the grooms. Perhaps you even retained/owned a smith and a ...
Politics & Policy

The Anointed

It is a commonplace observation that very smart people often have no sense. Writers since Aristophanes have been making sport of their intellectual superiors. Jonathan Swift had the academicians of ...
Politics & Policy

Paul, to the Life

Sarah Ruden is a poet and translator steeped in the literature of classical Greece and Rome. Her superb translation of The Aeneid was published in 2008 by Yale University Press; ...

Sections

The Long View

The (Lost) Federalist Papers

  Dear Publius: Got a hypothetical question for you. Would love your insight into this. Just say, hypothetically, that Congreff is trying to enact legislation that would benefitte pretty much everyone except ...
Politics & Policy

Poetry

  THE LOCAL HARVARD MAN A character you never meet, only hear of, A music student in The Sun Also Rises Helping a negro boxer in Vienna after The crowd went crazy when he floored ...
Happy Warrior

Adolescent Thinking

‘I  see some young people in the audience,” said President Obama in Ohio the other day. Not that young. For he assured them that, under Obamacare, they’d be eligible to ...
Politics & Policy

Letters

Monkeying with the Facts I don’t want to belabor Matthew Scully’s critical review of my book A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy, but he continues to ...
Politics & Policy

The Week

‐ “Rum, tickling, and the lash” just doesn’t have the same ring. ‐ Chief Justice John Roberts, belatedly responding to the president’s State of the Union address, said it was “troubling” ...
The Bent Pin

Thuggery with a Smile

Tormented people are said to be “pursued by the Furies.” I am eminently qualified for membership in what, in today’s parlance, probably would be called the tormented community, but the ...

Most Popular

Law & the Courts

Still Waiting for the Kraken . . .

All 50 states have certified their election results and determined the electors who will vote when the Electoral College meets Monday. The “safe harbor” deadline passed on Tuesday. We will learn if there will be any “rogue electors” who write in the candidate they personally prefer instead of the ... Read More
Law & the Courts

Still Waiting for the Kraken . . .

All 50 states have certified their election results and determined the electors who will vote when the Electoral College meets Monday. The “safe harbor” deadline passed on Tuesday. We will learn if there will be any “rogue electors” who write in the candidate they personally prefer instead of the ... Read More

Our Brave New Biden World

America traditionally has not reinvented reality after an election, although prior presidential winners have often tried, as in the fashion of our politics. But the new powers of social media, Silicon Valley, and a woke media have made reality-changing now a reality. Suddenly Antifa and BLM have all but ... Read More

Our Brave New Biden World

America traditionally has not reinvented reality after an election, although prior presidential winners have often tried, as in the fashion of our politics. But the new powers of social media, Silicon Valley, and a woke media have made reality-changing now a reality. Suddenly Antifa and BLM have all but ... Read More