When I Was Tom Sawyer [08/01/06] Back before the beginning of time, in the late Fifties when the sun lowered over small-town Alabama like a steaming towel, and it was so humid a tadpole could just about fly, we kids of eleven didn’t have many store-bought toys. We didn’t need’em, neither. On slow barefoot afternoons with nothing to do, we did things anyhow, most of’em the which you couldn’t do now. Some, probably, we shouldn’t have done. (Fred Reed)

A Modest Proposal To Abolish Universities [07/24/06] I think it is time to close the universities, and perhaps prosecute the professoriat under the RICO act as a corrupt and racketeering-influenced organization. Universities these days have the moral character of electronic churches, and as little educational value. They are an embarrassment to civilization. (Fred Reed)

Down, Down, Down [07/12/06] One hears often now that boys flounder in school, drop out, generally perform less well academically than girls, and don’t go to college. A certain amount of this commentary comes from women who seem quietly to enjoy the spectacle. Given that women control the schools, this might suggest that, if they are not actually causing the problem, neither are they in a hurry to do anything about it. Other people worry that the comparative superabundance of female college graduates will have no one to marry: While men will marry down, women won’t. (Fred Reed)

Curmudgeing Through Paradise: Grumpishness Concerning Travel [07/05/06] A year ago Violeta and I sat in a sidewalk cafe in Rome, a city of blowing exhaust, wretched traffic, and illegible graffiti spray-painted left and right. Talking was difficult above the blatt of trucks too big for narrow streets. Around the city ancient monuments slowly dissolved in dilute carbonic acid and turned gray from drifting soot. Italians, not particularly agreeable people, passed by in the international jeans-and-sweatshirt scruff that is less a style than an absence of thought.

Conversations With Lanc: Of The Which There Won't Be More [06/28/06] Ages ago, for reasons of parental misjudgement, I studied at a small college in rural Virginia, Hampden-Sydney. While surprisingly rigorous, being resolutely Southern and as yet untouched by the foolishness that now degrades schools, H-S was also relentlessly preppy. The studentry tended to be vapid future bankers in small towns and pre-meds who would go to the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. I loathed them, and they, me. At night, to escape, I walked wooded roads under the stars to smell the honeysuckle and listen to what the insects had to say. (Fred Reed)

A Possum Posse [06/20/06] The whole curious story began one evening when Harvard’s Conservative Student Union held a mass meeting in a local beer chute. The membership both agreed that the university’s practice of affirmative action had gone too far. In particular, it irritated them that the Native Peoples Impressment Office had recruited as students a hundred thirty-seven Tloxyproctyl aborigines from the rain forests of the Amazon Basin.

Then And Now [06/13/06] Yesterday I got back to Mexico after visiting Washington for a week. Returning to the United States at long intervals is like watching a flower wilt in time-lapse photography. As with the slow but inexorable growth of a tumor, the changes leap out if seen infrequently. Though in historical terms the rot goes fast, very fast, it is not easily noticed day to day.

Thoughts Thunk Southward: Not All Rumors Correct [05/25/06] I get a lot of email asking me, “What’s it really like in Mexico, Fred?” A book would be needed to give a good answer. Since people seem interested, I’ll take a few random shots at the topic. Don’t expect literature or organization. (Fred Reed)

On Recent Wars: Things Not Figured Out [05/19/06] People ask how we got into our splendid mess in Iraq and why we can’t get out. The question is a subset of a larger question: Why, since WWII, have so many first-world armies gotten into drawn-out guerrilla wars in bush-world countries, and lost? Examples abound: France in Vietnam, America in Vietnam, France in Algeria, Russia in Afghanistan, Israel in Lebanon, etc. Why don’t they learn?

Multiculturalism And Alligators [05/15/06] It is possible to derive an ashen satisfaction from watching really stupid people dancing on a tight rope over a den of alligators. At each resounding dental snap one yells “Yeeeeeeeee-ha! Told you so!” and reaches for another beer.

Eighth Grade In Mexico: Sounds Like A Low-Ranked American University To Me [05/08/06] Howsomever, I’ve received email telling me how poorly educated the Mexicans are. Hmmm. Maybe. You can make a case for it. I know that immigrant kids do terribly in school in the US, which augurs ill indeed. Most kids don’t read here either. Still, I found myself wondering just how bad the Mexican schools really are.

Playing At Adventure: Thoughts On The Spreading Mismatch [05/01/06] A friend recently sent me a story from the New York Times* about “survival schools” in which men, mostly young and urban, paint themselves in camouflage and pretend to be soldiers or survivors of plane crashes. These games are a pursuit of manliness, avowed to be such by the participants. (“Manliness likes to be unconventional,” [an instructor] added. It likes to disobey the law. So now we have reality camps.)

Fred Becomes Hacendado!: Biggest Event Since Flagellum Circumnavigates World [03/10/06] Ha! Vi and I just closed on a house in Jocotepec, the only remaining Mexican town on the north shore of Lake Chapala, near Guadalajara. We’re going to call it The Pancho Villa. It has a big ratty-looking walled-in yard with gynormous twisted orange trees, probably planted by Methuselah’s granddaddy, that drop oranges all over the place without regard to environmental piety. Flowers erupt everywhere, never asking permission. It’s wonderful. I hate trimmed gardens. They remind me of the kind of over-organized desk that I associate with compulsive hand-washers.

Consultations With Padre Kino: Regarding Dwarves [02/24/06] I have decided to become a drunk and live under a bench, maybe in a radiation suit. It only makes sense. The times are dire. Dark shapes twist in the international fog. The US, in the hands of puzzled children of low moral character, flaps about like a damp rag in a high wind. Anything could happen.

In Search Of Darkness: Found Lots Of It [02/16/06] The other day I found myself trapped next to the lobotomy box in the house of a friend. The show was one of those dismal productions based on sexual innuendo, the sort that I would have found titillating when I was eleven. The format was not complex. Neither, I suspect, was the audience.

Chaotic Reflections On Heresy: The USSR, America, North Korea, China [02/10/06] I find myself wondering why the ruling classes of America are so grindingly antagonistic to religion. I understand having no interest in religion. I do not understand the animosity. One might say, “The world’s religions are so many, so internally inconsistent and contradictory of each other, and so dependent on assertions which seem to me not to be factual, that I cannot believe any of them.” The position is neither unreasonable nor rabid. One holding it might go about his affairs, leaving others to believe as they chose. He might respect the faith of others without sharing it, might regard religions as harmless and colorful folklore, might indeed regard them as socially beneficent.

Of Eternity And Pickle Tops [02/01/06] On that far-off night in August of 1962, the moon floated huge and yellow over dark Virginia forests that stretched away and away to the glittering broad Potomac River. Chip Thompson and I trudged along the shoulder of US Route 301 from the Circle toward Dahlgren. We were sixteen. The county—King George County in the Tidewater—was mostly woods and creeks, less populated than now, simpler. Three-Oh-One was still two-lane, the main drag from Maine to Florida. Before us it ran like a determined snake up and down the hills to the Potomac River Bridge into Maryland.

Designing We Shall Go: "God is Dead": Nietsche ("Nietzsche is Dead": God) [01/12/06] A few thoughts regarding the recent foolishness in the courts of Pennsylvania over Intelligent Design: A pertinent question is why the curricula of the schools should be the concern of judges, who are little more than the enforcement arm of the academic and journalistic elites, imposing on Kansas what could not be legislated in Washington. I see no evidence that judges deploy intelligence, knowledge, or any other qualification other than boundless belief in their unlimited jurisdiction.

New Year In Guad: Few Surprised [01/05/06] One of the biggest mistakes conservatives have made in recent years is to assume that government, especially at the federal level, can effectively transmit their values now that the Republicans hold power in Washington, D.C.

Israel, Jews, And The Press: A Nonconforming View [12/23/05] Years back, when I was writing a military column for Universal Press Syndicate, I heard of a book on women in the armed services called The Kinder, Gentler Military (the title as it turned out was ironic) by Stephanie Gutmann, a Jewish woman out of Manhattan. The latter didn’t sound like a recommendation. I expected a feminist tirade. However my friend Catherine Aspy spoke well of it. Kate had graduated from Harvard in 1992 and, setting a historic record for wild improbability, enlisted in the US Army. She knew the military. She had seen what Gutmann was writing about, and liked the book. So I read it.

Thoughts Unthunk, Mostly: An Essay On Rejuvenation [12/14/05] I am persuaded that the gravest catastrophes to afflict this misguided planet were the inventions of agriculture, clean water, and antibiotics. Without these pernicious conceptions our squalid race might consist of a few millions of savages picking bananas and slaughtering the occasional bison. I do not say this in criticism of savages. Theirs was a reasonable existence. I like bananas, which contain potassium. Bison is succulent. A savage could sleep late.

Getting Apart: We'd All Like Ir Better [12/09/05] Explain it to me, diversity. I don’t get it. Everyone in the feddle gummint and all the news weasels and the academia nuts and assorted distasteful do-gooders with goiterous self-admiration are always honking and blowing about how we need diversity. Why? What is it good for?

Soldiers And Reporters: By A Well-Known Traitor [12/01/05] Much email comes my way, from military folk both current and retired, assuring me that the press consists of leftist commy anti-American liberal tree-hugging cowardly backstabbers who probably like the French and would date Jane Fonda. It is an old song. Having spent decades covering the armed forces, I have seen much of the Pentagon and the press. Things are a tad more complex.

Will Someone For God's Sake Marry Maureen?: Maybe She'll Shut Up [11/26/05] I read with ashen resignation that Maureen Dowd, the professional spinster of the New York Times, will soon birth a book, no doubt parthenogenetically, called Are Men Necessary? The problem apparently is that men have not found Maureen necessary. Hell hath…. Clearly there is something wrong with men. I weary of the self-absorbed clucking of aging poultry.

Attending Rupert's Wake: Not Much Sympathy [11/14/05] The hemorrhaging circulation of the paleomedia gratifies me better than bubblegum. Lord I love it. The tube worms of the network suites have discovered that lo! Fewer of the citizenry sit nightly before the flickering propaganda modem. The readership of newspapers yet falls. This dereliction they ascribe to declining literacy, the lack of public spirit, and indeed anything but their own uselessness.

Paris Burns Again: Let's Roast Frankfurters [11/08/05] Paris burns, crackling and popping as merrily as a Yule log when England was still Merrie and still English. Moslems prance about setting things alight, cars incinerate briskly, and the police suck their thumbs. Diversity. Oh yes. And more to come.

A Brass Pole In Bangkok [11/01/05] In the windy darkness beyond my window a brawling thunderstorm rages over Guadalajara. Lightning arcs sideways across the horizon, cloud to cloud, and rain sluices down like a cow pissing on a flat rock. For a day crumbling streets will be clean. For me, storms encourage contemplation, lend themselves to thoughts of whence and whither and why. Maybe Guad is just a third-world city like many I have known, but it is where I live now. Looking backward over a lengthening life, I wonder how I ended up here. I am not sure why anyone might care, but, well, I'm writing the column.

Mothers Against Drunk Drivers: Them Mothers Is A Mess [10/25/05] I begin to think that Mothers Against Drunk Drivers constitute a public nuisance, and need to be stuffed down an abandoned oil well. And indicted for fraud. We could dangle a microphone down the well on a wire so that they could testify. These tiresome biddies aren’t against drunk driving, which anyone with a possum’s brains is against. Your dangerous drunks are incorrigibles who time and again blow horrific BACs and wobble around the roads like student unicyclists. The proper response is permanent revocation of driver’s licenses. If they need to go to work they can buy a horse.

Fred Plans To Devolve: Bacteria More Respectable [10/18/05] I read with what would be despair if I cared enough that the courts, this time in Pennsylvania, are again getting their knickers in a knot over Evolution. Oh help. There must be another planet somewhere upon which to hide. Oprah, Rush Limbaugh, singing commercials, delayed flights, and Evolution.

Diving Into The Third World [10/05/05] I’m thinking about turning into a Marxist. Ol’ Karl used to talk about these irresistible currents of history that just swept you along and you couldn’t do anything about’em, like the current that swept communism mostly out of existence. (He may have had some other currents in mind.) I’m looking at what’s happening in the US. It’s gotta be an irresistible current. It couldn’t be on purpose.

Whimpering About Poverty: Maybe You Should Try The Real Thing [09/27/05] Repeatedly I hear that the misbehavior in New Orleans sprang from the exigencies of poverty. I would offer a countering view. Permit me to start with the family of Violeta, mi pareja in Mexico. I know them well. Listen, and judge.

A Grand Adventure: Except That it isn't [09/19/05] A friend recently asked me what I would tell a young man thinking about enlisting in the military. (He had in mind his son.) I would tell him this, which I wish someone had told me: Kid, you are being suckered. You are being used. You need to think carefully before signing that enlistment contract.

Looking For Commies In China: You'd Do Better In The Harvard Faculty Lounge [09/14/05] Just finished the last bag-drag back from China, jet-lagged, brain fried on caffeine, edgy groggy. Maybe I’ll kill something. Or hibernate. What province am I in? Why do these Mexicans have round eyes? It’s not natural. Some thoughts, barely: I couldn’t find the commies.

A Dismal Reality: It Wasn't Supposed To Be This Way [09/09/05] I was traveling in China when pictures of the looters in New Orleans began to appear on CNN. They were black of course. Looting and raping and burning are what blacks do when the lid loosens. Yes, I could phrase this more cautiously: These things are what some blacks, etc. or, more cutely, not all blacks are looters, but all looters….blah blah.

Slavery: Fine For Somebody Else [08/25/05] In judging slavery in the United States, which we are frequently asked to do, it is useful to ask what one would oneself do if in the situation of the slave. The question brings clarity. A wide gulf lies between tolerating the wrongs inflicted on others, and suffering them oneself. We all bear up well under the misfortunes of others. (Fred Reed)

These Are Interesting Times: Like Ebola [08/16/05] It’s getting stranger, I tell you. Riding the subway from Vienna Station to Franconia-Springfield, at every stop the woman driving the train said in an over-elocuted voice, “A-ten-tion, customers. This is a Metro Safety Tip. Pay attention to your surroundings. Look up from your newspapers and blackbirds [it sounded like, though nobody seemed to be carrying any sort of bird at all] every now and then. Report suspicious activity to Metro employees immediately.”

The Road To Margaritaville [08/09/05] I get hordes of mail (though I’m not sure how many emails in a horde) saying “Dear Fred, I too am sick of my job, the country, dumb-ass wars, the creeping mommy-state, and the hyper-regulation of practically everything, and I too want to live in paradise with a dusky maiden and sip funny drinks with lots of tequila in them and maybe die of cirrhosis but everybody has to anyway and it’s more dignified than a car crash on the Fourteenth Street Bridge. How?”

Community-Based Policing: Round And Round And Back Again [08/04/05] An advantage, or disadvantage, of having been in the news racket too long is that you see the same nostrums proposed again and again. One of these, “community-based policing,” was briefly popular during my long and fascinating years on the police beat for the Washington Times. I hear noises on the web to suggest that it may be returning.

Maribel Cuevas: A Great American—Damned Near The Only One, It Begins To Seem [07/26/05] Here, in the home of the free, the land of the brave, and suchlike prattle, I encounter this: “An 11-year-old girl who threw a stone at a group of boys pelting her with water balloons is being prosecuted on serious assault charges in California. Maribel Cuevas was arrested in April in a police operation which involved three police cars and a helicopter.”

Of Knowing And Not Knowing: Elvis, Haldane, And Excessive Self-Assurance [07/20/05] I wonder whether the rigidly scientific approach to the world explains quite as much as we think it does (and we seem to think it explains everything).

Hant Ponders Furrin Policy: [07/12/05] ‘Tother day in the afternoon I went down the holler to ask Uncle Hant about this here Eye-rack. One of them blonde gals on TV that looks like they’ve been hit on the head or maybe drank Drano and didn’t have her mind working right, if she had one, was talking about it. I didn’t much understand. Hant, he knows everything. Hell, there’s people in Wheeling even that don’t know as much as he does.

Viva Vicente Fox!: Enough Is Enough. Except For Gringos [07/07/05] Regarding the clownish performance apparently ongoing in the US over Mexico’s issuance of the now-famous stamps of Memin Penguin, a negrito hero of the comic books of decades back, a few thoughts. Let’s see. How many of those throwing fits had ever heard of Memin Penguin before this week? How many of them have seen a Memin Penguin comic book? How many read Spanish? How many read English? Have been to Mexico? Have the foggiest idea what they are talking about? How many are not spoiled, puerile, self-admiring twits?

Unnatural Selection: But I Guess You Got's To Choose [06/30/05] “BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- On April 25, Gregory Despres arrived at the U.S.-Canadian border crossing at Calais, Maine, carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood.”

Who Is Running This Choo-Choo Train?: Children At The Helm [06/01/05] The crumbling has begun, methinks. Congressmen, a few only now, speak of withdrawal from Iraq. A small thing, but for the White House a worrisome step toward vertebracy in that body of polyps. The numbers of the dissenting will grow as they see that they do not get hurt. Military recruiting is way down, and will stay down: The gullibility of the young cannot forever be relied upon. The House has summoned the courage to vote against parts of the Patriot Act. The president’s polls drop and drop.

A Continent Of Clowns: Helluva Show [06/07/05] “WASHINGTON (AP) -- Bursting into tears, eighth-grader Anurag Kashyap of California became the U.S. spelling champ Thursday… Tied for second place were 11-year-old Samir Patel, who is home-schooled in Colleyville, Texas, and Aliya Deri, 13, a Pleasanton, California, student.” Indian kids have won first place in five of the last seven years.

A Matter Of Allegiance: And Why One Might Wisely Withold It [05/30/05] I wish to propose a salubrious anarchy, a deliberate renunciation of fealty to country, society, and government, an assertion of independence from folly and moral decay. Permit me to offer a taxing political idea: When a society ceases to be worthy of support, it is reasonable to withdraw support. The time, I submit, has come.

Rednecks: The Virtues Thereof [05/23/05] There is a lot of snot and malice about rednecks on the internet. Most of it comes from such cornflowers and honeysuckles as college professors, other witless suburban nonentities, and assorted twits in cities. By “redneck,” these bundles of intellectual lingerie seem to mean anyone without a college degree who can hang a door or lube his car.

Thoughts On Poverty: And Its Absence [05/18/05] One reads much about the poor in America, their piteous lives, their blighted hopes, and the unrelieved downtreading of them by various social ogres such as oppressive corporations who sell them greasy hamburgers.

How We Were: Not A Bad Idea, Maybe [05/01/05] The summer of ’62 didn’t seem like much at the time. It was just summer. The County of King George was a forested section of Tidewater Virginia, peppered with small farms, and home to watermen who crabbed on the Potomac. To us it was just KG. It was about all we in high school knew. Only later did I realize what we’d had.

Fimmel Wimming Persons In Messico [04/20/05] Living as I do in Mexico, I get mail from guys saying “Hey, what’s the deal on women? I hear things are pretty good. Come on, spill it. What’s down there?” (Fred Reed)

Democracy, Birds, And Snails [04/14/05] I wonder whether liberal democracies do not follow an ordained trajectory into the muck, ripening like fruits, having their arteries harden, and falling, plop, to be eaten by birds and snails. (Fred Reed)

Reflections At A Funeral: The Fading Away Of A Once-Great Lingo [03/24/05] This morning I walked with Violeta along Lopez Cotilla through the used-book district. I leave shortly for ten days in Ecuador and wanted something to read on the trip. In the small English section of one stall I found a serviceable trove: Kipling’s Plain Tales from the Hills and Soldiers Three, the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Ernest Van Den Haag’s The Jewish Mystique, and Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. These set me back by twenty-two dollars.

Perfecting Wastrelsy In Messico [03/17/05] Guadalajara—The yearmeter hit 2005 coupla months back, I just hit fifty-nine, and I’m deciding what to do with my life. (Inexplicably you may not care what I do with my life, but I’m writing the column.) I’m going to screw off. You may ask how you could tell the difference. Dunno. I don’t do fine distinctions after lots of red wine. (Keep reading. There’s probably some kind of deep philosophical import in here somewhere.)

Fredwin On Evolution [03/12/05] Well, I thought, sophomore chemistry major that I then was: If we don’t know what conditions existed, or what conditions are necessary, and can’t reproduce the event in the laboratory, and can’t show it to be statistically probable—why are we so very sure that it happened? Would you hang a man on such evidence? My point was not that evolutionists were necessarily wrong. I simply didn’t see the evidence. While they couldn’t demonstrate that life had begun by chemical accident, I couldn’t show that it hadn’t. An inability to prove that something is statistically possible is not the same as proving that it is not possible. Not being able to reproduce an event in the laboratory does not establish that it didn’t happen in nature.

Summers Falls In Winter's Spring [02/23/05] It seems that Larry Summers, a timid man mysteriously president of Harvard, has suggested that men might be better than women at mathematics. He has been beset by the fanged mouselets of academe, and is now busily cringing like a puppy who has wet the rug. We must not mention what the correct do not want to hear.

In Search Of Men Who Want To Marry Mommy: Jocasting About [02/16/05] It is becoming a constant, like gravity: Maureen Dowd opens her mouth, and I get email from guys saying, “Fred! Geez, man, how much do apartments go for in Guadalajara?”

In The Shadow Of Fort Terror [02/09/05] I get mail saying, Fred, what’s with this expat thing? Sounds interesting. But what do you do all day? What is it like down there in Guadalahorror, or whatever strange and doubtless hazardous oddly-diseased third-world fleshpot you infest? Who do you hang with? Can you breathe the air? Do they have food in Mexico? Girls? Come on, spit it.

Objective Journalism And Hen's Teeth [02/03/05] I get email from people who say they wish that journalists would engage in objective coverage of the war in Iraq. They are always indignant and often bitter, but they mean opposite things. Those against the war assert that the fascist press is slanted in favor. Those in favor assert that the leftist press is slanted against. All agree that reporters are reprehensible. I wonder whether either group has any idea what it is talking about.

Portrait Of A Literate American [01/19/05] How is it possible to spend twelve years in school and not be able to read? How? It is beyond me. A sheet of dry wall would be reading in less time.

The Last Necessary Column On Politics [01/11/05] In my capacity as Western Civilization’s principal moral compass and intellectual lighthouse, I thought I might explain politics once and forever. There are altogether too many television shows about politics, too many books by people who would better pass their time in drinking. Newspapers have gotten above themselves. They are full of columnists. A final explanation of all things political will allow the papers to concern themselves entirely with coverage of ghastly murders, divorcing celebrities, and the incursions of space aliens into Puerto Rico.

Down With Education [12/31/04] It makes little more sense to require that the intelligent but uninterested study what they do not like—usually, the liberal arts. Doing so accomplishes nothing. An engineer forced to read Blake is merely an annoyed engineer. He will never touch a book of poetry in his academic afterlife. There is no reason why he should.

Read Your Newspaper, While You Still Can [12/13/04] The picture psychologists seem to paint of a world filled with people miserably repressing desires and feelings may partly be understood from the nature of the psychologists' own experience. People do not drop by the psychologist's office for friendly rational discussions, people who go to see psychologists are sick, or at least think they are. If one spends most of their days talking to and associating with people who are not quite right, one's view of people is likely to be distorted.

Be Good, Chillun [12/03/04] A friend swears the public likes this terror stuff because it gives the appearance of meaning to lives that don’t have any. It makes a kind of sense. Getting searched every ten minutes means that you might be dangerous, a satisfying thought to people who have never been dangerous. Terror is fun, when there isn’t any. Militarized robocops ninjaed-out in swat trinkets give a brief zest to a boring thirty years in the cubicle before a discreet burial.

Buckshot And Designer Water: Fred And The Election [11/13/04] A lot of columnists and talking heads on the coasts thought that the election was going to be a referendum on the war in Iraq. I doubt it was. Nobody in the middle of the country knows, or cares, anything about the world outside the United States. Nobody in Massachusetts knows anything, or cares much, about the world inside the United States. The Bush people have never heard of the Crimea. The Kerry people have barely heard of Texas.

Nothing To Fear But Nothing Itself [10/15/04] Symptoms of moral putrefaction seem normal to us because we have nothing but symptoms. Does a toad notice warts? Still, some stand out. A friend involved in municipal government in a medium-sized city in California tells me that 63% of the city’s employees take anti-depressants. Yeah. Official secret figure.

Fredwitz on War [9/27/04] Fred may offer some silly solutions like moving to the moon, but along the way he asks some very significant questions that just might catch you off guard, because the answers are, as Fred says, a little more important than glazed donuts.

Demographics And Witlessness [9/15/04] "When I write that I like Mexico, that it enjoys much that we have lost, that Latin societies are more livable if less prosperous than ours, dismissive letters arrive. They amount to the same letter: “If Mexico is so great, how come they all want to come to the United States?” The writers invariably believe that they have made a telling point." Because, in fact, they don't.

Where Are The Solutions, Fred? [9/1/04] Sometimes I suspect that people do not adequately appreciate my service as the chief moral compass and guidance counselor to what is left of western civilization. I know, I know, it is hard to believe. Yet I get mail saying, “Fred, you sure do grouse a lot about the decline of just about everything. How come you don’t come up with, you know, some solutions? Anybody can bitch.”

Random Thoughts On The Decline Of English—Bile, Vitriol, And Lost Clauses [8/24/04] I find myself grieving for what was once quite a language. English grows ugly and lapses into deformity.