Must reads

Bilious young fogey on Andrea Dworkin:

Let's get this straight. She went off to Europe, escaping from the straitlaced puritanism of the US (sound familiar? it is the oh so dreary mantra of the baby boomers), gets shacked up with some European "political radical" (how cliched), gets into pornography with him (and no doubt dope as well), and then she wonders why the relationship goes sour? The history of the left is littered with Bohemian beatnik males who lounge around all day proclaiming free dope and free love, and the women get shagged and to do the dishes. Well, I know it is wrong to say she asked for it - but we all know it is wrong to burgle houses, and do we leave the house unlocked when we go to the shops? (Via Tim Blair)

Joy of Knitting on Franco's mausoleum:

Totalitarian architecture is always funereal. It does not celebrate life, but death. It is not uplifting, like Gothic architecture. It is not exhilarating, like Renaissance art. It is designed to crush the individual. To this end it’s always huge. I saw photos of Wewelsburg Castle, where the SS celebrated their rites. I saw the plans for the buildings Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect, had designed for Berlin. They were never built owing to the fall of Nazism. They were beautiful in their way. The curse of art is that it is never tied to ethics. Morals and art don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Turning to Soviet architecture, we get more of the same. Huge, stark, gloomy. Nobody can smile there. Nobody can breathe, either.

Michael Blowhard on modern girls, lesbian camp and Dr. Johnson:

Boomers thought that something good would come of uninhibiting people -- that problems would be solved, that health and happiness would finally prevail. Did they imagine that inanity and depthlessness would result too? ... Why a culture should set up "uninhibitedness" as a moral goal is beyond me ...

The new girls lack poetry and allure, sweet though they probably are and attractive though they certainly are ... They're able to remain kids forever, endlessly playing, endlessly changing channels ... Life is about nothing but pleasing yourself ... Which is heaven -- but only in a happy-masturbator way ...