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Joseph Morris

President at Lincoln Legal Foundation

Born and reared in Gary, Indiana, Joseph Morris earned his A.B. and J.D. degrees from the University of Chicago. He held several positions in the Reagan administration, and heads the Lincoln Legal Foundation individual liberties, limited, constitutional government. He is also on the board of advisers of the conservative Federalist Society, and is a former managing editor of The American Spectator. Over the years, he has held leadership positions in the Republican Party, including president of the United Republican Fund Illinois.

I put nailed in the headline of this post and, as you will see, I was being both accurate andrisqu. Bear with me.

In my opinion, Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal is the best theater critic in the business today.

On Friday he revisited a play, 4000 Miles by playwright Amy Herzog, that he has reviewed before in prior productions. Its now on the stage in Hartford, Connecticut, and he looks at it afresh.

Mr. Teachout praises everything about the play, from the text itself to the staging and the acting. He points out that the play has an overt, but subtle, anti-communist theme. Overtly, but subtly, is often the best way in which art can instruct us, and those who would join the Gramscian battle against socialists and statists for control of the high ground of culture and the academy should take note.

Of course, overt and subtle can be elastic terms, which you will understand upon reading the review and learning that a major characters denunciation of communism is delivered with an epithet and an analogy to non-consensual anal sex.

We live in times in which the overt and the subtle are not prized as much as they ought to be, but we must do the best, as Ms. Herzog seems to have done, as we can.

[Trigger warning (in the spirit of the age) about Mr. Teachouts review: He quotes the epithet, the f-word, which he defuses with the customary three stars.]

Teachout Reviews a Play in Which Communism Is Nailed as the Ignoble Flaw was last modified: June 16th, 2017 by Joseph Morris

See original here:
Teachout Reviews a Play in Which Communism Is Nailed as the Ignoble Flaw - Somewhat Reasonable - Heartland Institute (blog)