Mark Tapson
The absurdist play The Arsonists, written by Swiss novelist and playwright Max Frisch and staged in 1958, opens with the middle-class protagonist, a businessman named Biedermann, commenting in exasperation on a wave of arson attacks in the community. The perpetrators reportedly manage to talk their way into people’s [...]
Mark Tapson
Recent titles like The War on the West, How to Save the West, Manhood, and The Toxic War on Masculinity suggest that conservative thinkers have become increasingly preoccupied with two urgent cultural issues: the decline of Western civilization and the crisis of masculinity. I myself have written and [...]
Mark Tapson
In a statement that crystallized the spirit of his era, Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola declared in his Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486) that the free will granted to us by God allows us either to descend to the level of brutes or to aspire [...]
Mark Tapson
If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for War. – George Washington During the January [...]
Mark Tapson
On the cusp of the 2008 presidential election, then-candidate Barack Obama memorably told a crowd at Missouri University that “we are five days from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” This notion that the incoming administration intended to burn down the old, flawed America, so that a [...]
Mark Tapson
In a revealing 2013 network promo, then-host Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC caused a stir by declaring, in the context of children’s education, “We’ve always had kind of a private notion of children: ‘Your kid is yours, and totally your responsibility.’ We haven’t had a very collective notion that [...]