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‘American Oasis’ Review: The Lure of the Desert
The Southwest has recently sent left-leaning senators to Washington. As more minorities move there, the region might shift to the right.
Hating the Southwest, particularly its burgeoning cities such as Phoenix, is de rigueur in American media. Jon Stewart has called Arizona “the meth lab of democracy.” Hunter S. Thompson described hell as an “overcrowded version of Phoenix.” Fran Lebowitz, the epitome of New York progressive arrogance, said: “I don’t think anyone needs Arizona. . . . Putin: here take Arizona, leave Ukraine.”
It’s a tendency that Kyle Paoletta rightfully finds annoying. In “American Oasis,” Mr. Paoletta, a journalist and critic, focuses on the region spanning California to Texas and argues that the Southwest, if not a mistake, is poised for ecological and social dislocation.
Having grown up in Albuquerque, N.M., the son of affluent professionals, Mr. Paoletta now questions whether newcomers “who have sought to master the Sonoran Desert with air conditioning and aqueducts” can really call the region home.
Pursuit of Happiness
National Poll from Civitas Institute: Americans Concerned About AI, Economic Issues
The Civitas Institute Poll, conducted from March 11-20, 2025, asked 1,200 Americans an array of questions about how things are going in the country.
The Next Californias
Colorado, Washington, and Oregon have adopted many of the policies contributing to the Golden State’s decline.
The Moral Collapse on Campus Is a Result of the Hollowing Out of the Humanities
Mending a civic and intellectual catastrophe.
The French Origins of Urban Renewal
Paris’s drastic transformation, often termed “Haussmannization,” was unprecedented in scope and set the stage for future traumatic episodes of urban renewal in other countries, including America.
Diversity, Real and Imposed
Diversity imposed drowns human spontaneity and the shades and gradations of man’s mysterious existence into heartless uniformity, bearing no pulses or imaginations.
