Our World

There are countless individual factors that could make anyone’s life less than enjoyable.

And all of us go through various hard times. I myself am going through a very rough patch now, between my health and that of others close to me.

That said, I will make the claim that those of us born in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s won life’s lottery.

Let me explain.

The Roman Empire grew rich off the backs of other nations. There’s no question about that. War and conquest, but also bequests, made Rome the richest state in the ancient world by the second century BC, a time when wealth was all about gold, silver, land and food production, and slaves.

Rome was also lucky. The death of Alexander in 323 BC saw his vast empire fragment into the Hellenistic kingdoms, mainly of Macedonia, the Seleukid kingdom of Syria, and Ptolemaic Egypt. They enervated themselves over decades of inconclusive wars and were easy pickings for Rome. The people who lived there, exhausted by and sick of endless fighting, acquiesced easily into Roman rule. The Eastern Mediterranean grew richer than had ever been thought possible.

The Story of Everything is a 2026 documentary addressing the question of whether or not science supports the possible existence of a creator God. Before I get too deep in the weeds of this review, let me say, I loved The Story of Everything. The Story of Everything is a polished, professional, engrossing documentary that any thinking person, including high school students, could enjoy. Please go see it in a theater if you can, and if you can’t, grab it up as soon as it appears in other formats. Its run is limited, and in the theater where I saw it, there was only one showing. Otherwise, I would have happily sat through this film three times. I was on the edge of my seat. I want a miniseries continuing the work of the documentary, complete with supplemental materials, including question-and-answer notebooks viewers can fill in to review, test, and reinforce all they’ve learned.

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Sage Creek Elementary School, located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, has decided to jettison Mother’s Day and Father’s Day presents in favor of much vaguer “family” gifts, which the Increasingly Less White North’s National Post noted is “part of a new trend among some Canadian schools downplaying or eliminating the traditional parental celebrations.”

Gee, I wonder why they are doing this. Just kidding.

The warning signs have been there for decades. Back in 1983, American author Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a powerful book — The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment — arguing that a male revolt was underway. Since the 1950s, she suggested, men had begun rebelling against the breadwinner ethic, inspired by Playboy culture, the counterculture and a desire for personal freedom. They were rejecting the cultural ideology that had shamed them into tying the knot and becoming a good provider, lest they be seen as immature, irresponsible and less than a real man.

Ehrenreich understood that marriage was the mechanism by which society harnessed male productivity. Remove the shame and the yoke comes off.

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A new Statistics Canada study has confirmed what housing researchers and young Canadians have argued for years: the generational ladder to homeownership has not just gotten harder to climb for many Millennials, but for an increasing number, it has been pulled up entirely.

Released last week, the study draws on Census of Population data from 1991, 2006, and 2021 to compare how Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials each fared in the housing market between ages 25 and 39. The study found Millennials more likely to live with parents, less likely to own, and, when they do own, far less likely to own the kind of home previous generations took for granted.

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The most important lessons are usually learned from experience.

Occasionally, an author whose experience has imparted vivid, deep, and durable lessons emerges to share them with the rest of us. That is precisely what Theodore Dalrymple, the pen name of Anthony Daniels, has done with his remarkable book, Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass.

Dalrymple spent his career as a doctor in places most of us would rather avoid: prison wards, inner city hospitals, and the crumbling neighborhoods that feed them. There, he saw poverty at its most corrosive—an affliction involving not merely a shortage of money but of meaning, responsibility, and hope.  

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You wouldn’t steal a car. You wouldn’t steal a handbag. But would you keep a £450 paddleboard delivered to you by mistake?

For a growing number of the usually law-abiding middle class, the answer is “yes”. While many would draw the line at slipping something into their handbag at the shops, they have no qualms about claiming that a product wasn’t delivered so they could get a refund, or “forgetting” to scan an item at the self-service checkout.

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The most consequential inequality in America is not the wealth gap or the wage gap. It may not be the racial opportunity gap. The marriage gap is wreaking havoc. And unfortunately, it’s the gap that gets the least attention.

I’m a libertarian. I don’t care whom, or if, you marry. Yet I’m reminded that there is a problem by a new report from the American Enterprise Institute. Edited by Kevin Corinth and Scott Winship, “Land of Opportunity: Advancing the American Dream” covers a broad range of challenges facing the country today, from the cost of living and workforce development to education, crime, and the erosion of community life.