Free Republic

Our frequent exposure to the exhibitionistic snuff porn of Jihadis has prompted numerous attempts at psychological explanation. Clinicians know how comforting it is to have a diagnostic label. Correct diagnosis can be the first step to cure...

“...there must be a wonderful soothing power in mere words…I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace..” (our emphasis) ---Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad When Horsefeathers served as a Navy psychiatrist during the Vietnam war, one of his weekly duties was interviewing and assessing potential draftees who were seeking to avoid service by claiming mental illness. Many of these were recent Ivy League graduates, students of the humanities, who were active protesters of what they insisted was an immoral war.

Recently Commentary Magazine published a fact filled sociological piece by Charles Murray, telling readers about Jewish genius and seeking to explain the origins of their intellectual superiority. Such flattering essays are bound to invite an identification, by even the least intelligent Jew, with the greats of Jewish history. It stirs ethnic pride. We're all related to Einstein, aren't we, and to all those great scientists who keep winning disproportionate numbers of Nobel prizes? If only we'd paid a little more attention to advanced calculus, no doubt we too could have captured the Prize...

Many years ago—before the sixties, when activist reformers discovered the notion that mentally ill patients were an oppressed people, like Negroes (as Blacks preferred to be called then), women, and homosexuals (as Gay men were identified then), and decided that they must be set free from their sadistic doctors and nurses (deinstitutionalized) in order to become independent (homeless)—I was a resident physician studying psychiatry at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital...

"Three or four powerful energic forces collided last week to create a perfect cultural storm that ended in toppling one of the giants of radio entertainment from his current venue. The forces at work were a) the culture of offensive humor and its audience of millions of lovers of pie-in-the-face comedy led by Don Imus; b) the paranoid hypersensitivity of black, moth-eaten, demagogues Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and their grievance collecting, loser minions; c) tens of millions of dollars in advertising fees whirling around in the ether and in danger of encamping to safer venues; d) and billions of...

TOO many writers and pundits today are obsessed, almost pathologically, by the conviction that Israel is the most evil country that ever has existed, and that its removal from the family of nations is a precondition of world peace. Such lethally utopian dreams are not strictly the playground of anti-Semites, but also the common coin of much liberal Jewish writing and speechifying about Israel. As Brit George Steiner put it, "Might the Christian West and Islam live more humanely, more at ease with themselves, if the Jewish problem were indeed 'resolved' (that is, endlosung or final solution)."

The Horsefeathers award for racial stereotyping goes to Selena Roberts of the New York Times. The New York Times sports pages have long been infected by the same p.c. leftism as their editorial pages. The football playoffs provide an opportunity for extended socio-political pontificating. In NYTimes sports world: Black=caring=warm=soulful=flexible=creative=human=PROGRESSIVE. White=rigid=authoritarian=unemotional=robotic=DICTATORIAL. Selena Roberts produces a classic example of how to condemn racial stereotyping while actively perpetuating it. In an article on football coaches, Bill Belichik, the outstanding coach of the New England Patriots whose main defect seems to be his skin color--white--is contrasted with the "soulful", utterly adorable, black coach of...

Staring down at the reader of Horsefeathers is a portrait of Samuel Johnson along with the Marx Brothers. We are among the legion of admirers of the great man. Juxtaposing his portrait to one of the Marx brothers indicates how much we appreciate Johnson's humor. His friend, Hester Thrale said: "No man loved laughing any better, and his vein of humor was rich and apparently inexhaustible." Our favorite modern biography of Johnson, by W. Jackson Bate has a chapter (27) called Humor and Wit. Like Groucho, Johnson possessed both verbal wit- ("A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on...

Monday night’s program on “Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence,” broadcast by PBS, was strikingly effective in depicting the history of the world’s longest-running prejudice, its sources, forms, and uses in different cultures at different times...

Dirty Harry has finally succumbed to the endemic moral pathology of Hollywood. The best evidence of this is the New York Times’ A.O. Scott’s rating of “almost perfect” for Clint Eastwood’s new film “Letters from Iwo Jima.” Following suit, most of the major media reviews acknowledged it as a masterpiece and contender for many Academy Awards...

John Burns stands out as the only trustworthy NYTimes Iraq reporter. Over the years he has kept the focus on the sadistic practices of Arab tyrants, hate spewing clerics, and assorted psychopaths. His accounts of Saddam Hussein's depradations have vividly personalized the mass tortures and murders and placed Saddam in the company of Stalin, Hitler and Mao. Burns retrieved the stories of families choking to death in clouds of poison gas, of individuals being tortured and murdered for no reason other than to feed the dictator's megalomania. Anyone following Burns's accounts over the years will have a hard time refraining...

Finally, some good uses for all those smuggled arms: Dec. 19, 2006 11:48 2 dead as 2nd PA cease-fire crumbles By KHALED ABU TOAMEH AND JPOST.COM STAFF Hamas gunmen killed two Palestinian policemen loyal to the rival Fatah movement early Wednesday, just hours after the sides agreed to a new cease-fire meant to end more than a week of factional fighting...

"...When America's liberal elite were offered the chance to pay up to $500,000 each (about £260,000) to attend Bill Clinton's 60th birthday extravaganza tonight - with the added promise of a private Rolling Stones concert - a packed house was expected...."

Horsefeathers has been fascinated by the decline of Liberalism. Perhaps this is because its rise and fall has occurred over the course of his own lifetime. It sometimes strikes us that all the people, now departed, whose opinions mattered most to us were liberals. While they are gone, Liberalism itself lingers, sick unto death, an almost moribund version of its once lively self. Liberalism was a part of the world of ideas in which we lived, part of what we admired in the older generation. It was the air we breathed and the way we thought of ourselves: we were...

Samuel Johnson when confronted with Bishop Berkeley's theory of the non-existence of matter kicked mightily at a stone from which his foot rebounded and said: "I refute it thus". More than 200 years later, the poet Richard Wilbur offered the perfect post-Modern reply when he wrote: "Kick at the rock Sam Johnson/Break your bones/But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones." The Valerie Plame tale should be regarded for what it is-a post-modern fable, ideally expressive of the mode of thought current in media wordsmith gradates of our Ivy League liberal arts faculties. From the very beginning, the rocks of...

The great success of Western capitalism has produced a wordsmith class that is utterly removed from the harsher realities of human nature. This pampered governing and media elite shares a fantasy view of human nature as basically benign; aggression is only reactive, not innate. Multicultural egalitarianism is a religious faith, promoted by liberal arts faculties and not subject to refutation by mere facts...

Many authors of fiction are not content to create their imaginary worlds for our entertainment. After all, they are 'artists', striving for higher truths. They like to pretend that they possess superior moral wisdom and understanding of the real world. Unlike most of us, their falsehoods, if skillfully and entertainingly rendered, can win them acclaim and sometimes Nobel Prizes. Doesn’t their creativity make them special? Well actually, no...

Adam Nagourney of the New York (Jihadi) Times, offers his "analysis" of the Lieberman loss to Corliss (oops!) Thomas Lamont in the Connecticut primary. It's the usual tired tut-tutting about why the pacifist appeasers are gaining strength in the Democratic party, though they're never identified as such; rather they're new blood, "winds of change", breathing life into the party. However, in all the "on the one hand, on the other hand" analysis no mention is made of the elephant in the room---Jew hatred...

Totalitarian killers in pursuit of a murderous utopian agenda can always count on the New York Times to transform them into noble representatives of the popular will. Whether Stalin or Hitler, Pol Pot, or Mao, Fidel, Che or Arafat, the Times will humanize them. The archetype was cuddly Uncle Joe Stalin as seen through the eyes of Walter Duranty. Count on Duranty's successors to enlighten us about how personable these tyrants are...

Horsefeathers has shared the worry of many friends of Israel concerning the progress of the war. We regretted the early hesitancy and waffling by Israel's political leaders. Yet we also noticed an early disturbing defeatist tendency on the part of real friends of Israel. After less than a week, the various armchair generals and ex-Colonels were all over the media proclaiming that Israel had lost,