Jeff Minick

Jeff Minick

Contributor

Jeff Minick is a free-lance writer and teacher living in Front Royal, Virginia. He may be found online at jeffminick.com.

Recent blog posts by this author

Rumor and Bias, Inaccuracy and Ignorance: The Low State of Journalism

William Tecumseh Sherman, a Civil War general not known for his delicacy of speech, once said, “If I had my choice, I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.” Like many people...

Vive La Différence: A Toast to Men and Women

In a recent online article, “Boys Will Be Boys Except When They Are Girls,” Dr. Brian Joondeph addresses the unfairness of transgender women competing in female sports events. In making his case, he offers some fascinating statistics. Here are some...

Ten Guides for Turning Boys Into Men

Many young men are puzzled these days about the meaning of manhood, perplexed by what they hear in a classroom, learn online, or see in their friends. They want to work, to love, to do good in the world, to emulate other men. Unfortunately, maps for...

Slavery Is Alive and Well Today… but Not in the Way Many Expect

What exactly is a slave?   My online dictionary describes it as “a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.”   That one doesn’t satisfy. Though some might debate the definition of “legal property...

Hope for the Future is Not Blind Optimism

A Florida reader of Intellectual Takeout sent me a thoughtful email asking a question about my article from several weeks ago. It ran as follows: Yesterday, I read The Long March: Are Its Days Numbered? That essay is what prompted me to write...

Has Patriotism Gone out of Fashion?

"April is the cruellest month," notes T. S. Eliot in his poem, "The Waste Land." For most of us, however, April brings pleasures and celebrations. Where I live, the forsythias have exploded, causing my young granddaughter to wonder why all...

Two and Two Now Equal Five

A few years ago, I thought it was time to retire George Orwell’s 1984 to the attic. My years of teaching literature convinced me that Huxley’s Brave New World was more likely to unfold: a world in which an elite might control the rest of us through...

White Privilege: A Thing of the Past?

White privilege. For years now, we’ve heard some folks sling that term around along with that verbal slap, “Check your privilege.” But here’s a question: Does white privilege exist in 2019? Or is it just a way of smearing whites? First, a...

The Long March: Are Its Days Numbered?

A golden jubilee is by definition the celebration of a fiftieth anniversary. Fifty years have passed since a watershed year in our history: 1969. Yet many of us, I suspect, will find little gold or jubilee in this anniversary. Yes, 1969 was...

The Best Way to Teach History to Children

When an old person dies, a library burns to the ground.                                 - Variation on an African proverb In the mid-1990s, Mrs. Irene Harrison (1890...

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