Eighteenth-century matrons would have never have dreamed of appointing a redhaired wet nurse for their precious offspring - redheads passed on their horrible characters through their milk.

We are a naturally hierarchical species.

Aging nations have arteries clogged with obsolete laws, slowing blood flow and preventing oxygen from reaching all parts of the body politic. Physicians call this arteriosclerosis; historians see...

Fascism is a religious concept.

We'll try to cooperate fully with the IRS, because, as citizens, we feel a strong patriotic duty not to go to jail.

A 'good' family, it seems, is one that used to be better.

One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.

When you strip hope from people, it leaves a void, and that void needs to be filled. And very likely, that void is going to be filled by an ideology... Hope and faith are so connected. Now, when...

Upper classes are a nation's past the middle - class is its future.

Memorial services are the cocktail parties of the geriatric set.

Today while the titular head of the family may still be the father everyone knows that he is little more than chairman at most of the entertainment committee.

Good sociologists have always had an insatiable curiosity about even the trivialities of human behaviour, and if this curiosity leads a sociologist to devote many years to the painstaking exploration...

Operating in the interstices of communist China society was at once exhilarating and uncertain. There were no rules. Or rather, there was only one rule: that nothing is allowed. But the corollary,...

How old did someone have to be before they could be put to use to make tea?

Women are almost two thirds more likely than men to believe in God, a major study of attitudes among middle aged Britons has found, says The Telegraph. Well, men are twice more likely than God to...

Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies.

At its most basic, the allure of fundamentalism, whether religious or ideological, liberal or conservative, is that it provides an appealing order to things that are actually disorderly.

The point of an organic family is to release the children from the disadvantages of being extensions of their parents so that they can belong primarily to themselves. They may accept the services that...

- If a woman wears a short skirt in the company of a man it means "I want to fuck", if she talks with a man when she wears a short skirt it means "I want to fuck just you". - And if I have no clothes...

I am unpersuaded that relative poverty and hard work are greater adversities than relative affluence and free time.

What makes a human being want to kill another who has done him no personal harm? Patriotism.

Sex is not about reproduction, gender is not about males and females, courtship is not about persuasion, fashion is not about beauty, and love is not about affection. Below the surface of every...

The secret of modernity is hidden in its capacity to recruit people from any background and any confession to participate in the greatest of military campaigns, the campaign for the progressive relief...

Something is indeed returning today - but the conventional wisdom that this is religion making its reappearance is insufficient to satisfy critical inquiries. Nor is it the return of a factor that had...

Sociologists have a theory of the looking - glass self. You become what the most important person in your life {wife, father, boss, etc.} thinks you are. How would my life change if I truly believed...

The richer and more market-oriented societies have become, the nicer people have behaved.

Nation-states resemble war; city-states resemble commerce; families resemble stability; and individuals resemble entertainment

Thus, the path to creating a sovereign (or sacred) element — whether an institutional figure or a victim offered for consummation — is a negation of one of those taboos whose observance makes us...

You know, I think the main purpose of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps is to get poor Americans into clean, pressed, unpatched clothes, so rich Americans can stand to look at them.

But one way or another competing and weeding takes place . . . or a race goes downhill.