Author: S. T. Joshi

Certain advocates of the rights of transgender individuals are becoming increasingly aggressive in demanding that the pronoun they be used in reference to those who wish it; others, who maintain that they do not conform to the “binary” use of the male or female singular pronoun, have also been making such claims. (Some advocates now …

Am I the only one to notice that religions across the world have been even more of a nuisance—and, in a distressing number of cases, far more than a nuisance—than usual lately? At this point, it is hardly worth noting how Buddhists (yes, Buddhists) in Myanmar continue to persecute the Muslim Rohingya or how Israelis …

There has been much loose talk of late about an impending civil war in the United States. For some desperate individuals, our stark political differences—compounded or, indeed, caused by differences in education, socioeconomic status, and religious (or nonreligious) belief—are so extreme that one’s opponents are not regarded merely as antagonists to be defeated at the …

Our elation at the humiliating defeat of Donald Trump is tempered by our disgust at the contemptible and hypocritical appointment of the extreme Catholic Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court by the Republican-controlled Senate, only weeks before the election. During the theater of the absurd that passed for confirmation hearings, Democrats missed the opportunity …

[Extract from A History of the United States (2401)] As we, at the dawn of the twenty-fifth century CE, look back upon the recent history of this great country, we are struck by the spectacular fall of what used to be called the “white race” in the early twenty-first century. It has long been known …

The one certainty that has emerged in the wake of this global pandemic is the utter moral collapse of the Republican Party. I refer to a moral collapse because, all apart from the appalling and inexcusable fecklessness of its leader in dealing with the medical issues of the outbreak, the party as a whole has …

All is not well with the autocrats of the world. I refer not only to the real McCoys but the seemingly innumerable half-tyrants, dictator wannabes, and other such riffraff who, in the past decade or more, have alarmingly populated certain otherwise sane countries around the world. Indeed, there are now so many of these pestiferous …

Readers of this magazine have no doubt observed that certain state legislatures have recently fallen all over themselves in passing the most severe and uncompromising anti-abortion legislation in decades—and that’s saying something, because hundreds of laws making abortion difficult (and in some instances nearly impossible) for those women who have the misfortune to be poor …

I am a man—and I am beginning to be ashamed of that. The great majority of men, it would appear, somehow manage to scrub from their minds the multitudinous, indeed incalculable, ways in which women have been subjugated, degraded, and scorned over countless millennia; it is, quite frankly, too horrible a prospect to face honestly. …

Pity the poor white nationalist! He (and it is almost always a he) is not faring well these days. You think otherwise? Au contraire, mes amis! Take no notice of the fact that incidents of abuse and violence against persons of color committed by white racists are, in numerical terms, on the rise—whether it be …

Let’s step back a bit. At a time when we are constantly bombarded with information (true, false, biased, or fabricated), it can be difficult to take note of broader social and cultural developments that have radically changed the simple act of living in the United States at this moment in history—and, in my view, changed …

Some months ago, a conservative firebrand named Kevin Williamson was chosen as a columnist for the venerable magazine The Atlantic. The thinking, evidently, was that the magazine’s generally liberal readership might profit (it was never clarified exactly how) by absorbing a point of view remote from and generally hostile to its customary presuppositions. But then …

To those of us who wondered when, if ever, a significant majority of Americans would develop a shuddering loathing of the appalling gun violence that occurs daily in this country—rather than passing it off with callous indifference as some sort of inevitable, unavoidable by-product of the “price of freedom”—I can now say: The time is now. …

How much lower can the GOP’s current incarnation go?

Do supporters of the “cake artist” understand the mischief that would follow if his argument for refusing service to same-sex couples became settled law?

Gore Vidal, a laureate of the International Academy of Humanism (a Council for Secular Humanism program), recently died at the age of eighty-six. Academy secretary Stephen Law said: “Gore Vidal has been an inspirational figure to a great many people, myself included. Of course, he will be remembered for being urbane, fiendishly talented, and terrifyingly …