Yawper

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place […]

The prophet of the greatest American virtue warned us.  Ralph Waldo Emerson, in the essay Self-Reliance, wrote that, there is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that… no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given […]

Is information dead? Consider two well-known facts.  First, we live in the Information Age.  Thanks to technology, information is more widely accessible, travels faster, and is broader than ever imagined in history.  At the same time, the nation bemoans the ill-informed and uninformed population.  The two truths should be mutually exclusive but instead seem to […]

“The Age of Chivalry is gone.  That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever,” wrote Edmund Burke around 1790.  Over at The Atlantic, Emily Esfahani Smith argues that, 222 years after Burke, it is time to revive chivalry. The young Ms. Smith, herself something of Burkean, is […]

There has not been much Yawping lately.  Much needs to be said and the onslaught of untruths and distortions continues without relent.  Yet, I have been quiet. Surely there are excuses: the holidays are approaching, things are busier than usual at work, and so on.  Excuses are merely after-the-fact rationalizations.  The reason for the lack […]