After a one week hiatus for jury duty, the Three Whisky Happy Hour with Lucretia and me is back, but with a role-reversal: Lucretia bartends this week! Partly this is so Lucretia can school me on how to think about vigilantism and the case of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who has been charged with murder for what appears to have been self-defense in the Kenosha riots earlier this week. I received quite a lot of reader blowback for my brief note expressing doubts about where we draw the line between reasonable self-defense and vigilantism that can dissolve into mob rule.
Our second flight of whisky is inspired by Joseph Epstein’s commentary in today’s Wall Street Journal on “Today’s College Classroom is a Therapy Session,” in which we drink to and reminisce about having one of the toughest “tough guy” professors—the late constitutional historian Leonard Levy. He was terrifying in the classroom in ways that wouldn’t be allowed today—and an experience neither of us would trade for anything. Students today have no idea what they’ve lost with our new emphasis on “safe” and “nurturing” classrooms.
Finally, we decided to drink to a winner and loser of the week. Our surprise winner of the week is author J.K. Rowling, for returning a stupid prize from the Kennedy family because some Kennedys are upset that she won’t submit to the increasingly tyrannical transgender ideology. And our loser of the week is clueless Portland, Oregon, Mayor Ted Wheeler, who is getting what he deserves good and hard. And we can drink to that, too.
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