Marxists are often chided for prizing theory over reality, but Kevin Schmiesing’s assessment in Law & Liberty of Andrew Hartman’s 550-page Karl Marx in America finds this author largely does the opposite. Hartman’s descriptions of communism’s rancorous currents flowing through America are interesting and largely accurate, writes Schmiesing, but his evaluation of Marxism as philosophy is weak. This in turn blinds Hartman to the key question: why did Communism never really catch on in America?
The Frigid Isle
Íris Erlingsdóttir shines a light on the world’s first wholly feminized state. Women, she writes in The European Conservative, run everything in Iceland: “the presidency, the prime minister’s office…[the] national state church…schools, municipalities, police…newsrooms and [the] ever-expanding public bureaucracy.” As for the men, Erlingsdóttir observes, they describe themselves ruefully as (bad-taste alert) “pussy-whipped.”
