Death of the Silicon Valley dream

The death of the Western literary tradition

A regular reader of Le Figaro for some years, I have been noting the frequency with which the editors print articles relating to the Académie française, founded by Cardinal Richelieu in 1634 for the purpose of acting as the protector and patron of the French language, fixing its usage and giving it exact rules to make it competent to deal clearly and elegantly with the arts and sciences. It was decreed that the academy should consist of precisely forty members, and that upon the death of any one of them the candidate to replace him should pay court to the remaining thirty-nine to be selected to fill his numbered seat. The sitting forty were known as “les Immortels.

Bill Kauffman

How Karl Hess went from Mr. ‘Ultra-Conservative’ to supporter of the New Left

Some of the more interesting political figures of our day — Tulsi Gabbard, Glenn Greenwald, Tucker Carlson — crossed the street to find new friends, but few in our history have ever switched teams with the dramatic flair of Karl Hess, the centenary of whose birth we will toast this May 25. Born in Washington, DC to a beautiful switchboard operator and a rakish Filipino millionaire, Karl Hess quit school at fifteen and embarked on a career that turned into an anti-career. He was a police reporter, a Newsweek editor, a corporate flack, a Republican ghostwriter, and, ultimately, Barry Goldwater’s speechwriter and traveling companion during the Arizona senator’s 1964 presidential candidacy.

Cosmo Landesman

Make love, not culture war

I think I know how to end the culture wars at a stroke. My solution can be summed up in a simple slogan: make love, not culture war. Or, to put it another way — poke the woke. Let me explain. I have a new woman in my life and not just any woman. I have a Woke Woman. That’s right: a full-on, vegetarian, eco-activist, kill-the-rich, bisexual, transgender-defender and social justice warrior. She’s also a shrink. And not just any kind of shrink, but a Lacanian shrink! They’re the followers of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. In the UK we have a soccer team called Millwall that all the other fans hate. Millwall fans have a song that goes, “No one likes us, we don’t care!” Lacan therapists are the Millwall of therapy — nobody in the therapeutic community likes them.

Life