Our Pushover President by Patrick J. Buchanan • November 24, 2009 • Printer-friendly “This state visit is . . . a terrible mistake,” said Rep. Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. “He is illegitimate with his own people, and Brazil is now going to give him the air of legitimacy...
Year: 2009
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Dumbo Univeristy
As George W. Bush famously asked, “Is our children learning?” Apparently not in the twin capitals of liberalism, D.C. and New York. In a ranking of 50 states and D.C. by how much each spent per pupil in public schools in 2005, New York ranked first; D.C. third. The state spent $14,100, and New York...
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Multiplication Tables
No one can accuse Mandolyna Theodoracopulos of not being provocative, and I read her recent post “Jon and Kate Plus Hate” with interest. I entirely agree with her criticisms of in vitro fertilization, and indeed would go well beyond them: Just because science allows us to do something does not mean that we should, and...
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Athens and Jerusalem V: The Germanization of Christianity
Some Tedious but Necessary Preliminaries The title of James C. Russell's The Germanization of Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation does not sound like the opening shot in a war against Christianity. However, ever since Sam Francis' apparently glowing review, conservative neopagans, atheists, and Nordicists have trumpeted the book ...
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Keeping the Faith—December 2009
PERSPECTIVE Going Through the Motionsby Thomas Fleming VIEWS Recovering the Dignity of Truthby William MurchisonEpiscopalians and/or Anglicans. Fighting for Orthodoxy Among the Methodistsby Mark TooleySome good news. A Tale of Two Subversivesby Srdja TrifkovicBattling Christophobia in California and Serbia. NEWS Government-Managed Businessby Stephen B. PresserAs Silent Cal spins . . . REVIEWS Waiting for Charles...
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Remembering Who We Are—November 2009
PERSPECTIVE Something to Remember by Thomas Fleming VIEWS Race and Racism by Tom Landess A brief history. Saving French in Quebec by Luc Gagnon Why language isn’t enough. NEWS Social Security’s Coming Crash by Doug Bandow The certain end of entitlement. REVIEWS It’s the Culture, Stupid! by Tom Piatak Paul M. Weyrich: The Next Conservatism plus William J. Quirk on Theresa Amato’s Grand Illusion: ...
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A Year of Obama
A year after Obama's triumphant election, hauling substantial majorities in the House and Senate on his coattails, the progressive sector sits trying to warm its hands before the bonfire of all its hopes. An awful
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America’s Dismal Future
It did not take the Israel lobby long to make mincemeat out of the Obama administration’s “no new settlements” position. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is bragging about Israel’s latest victory over the U.S. government as Israel continues to build illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land. In May, President Obama read the Israelis the riot act,...
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Athens and Jerusalem IV: Medieval Christian Wimps
Like, for example, Charles Martel and his son Charlemagne, Otto the Great and Barbarossa, Henry II of England and his son Richard Coeur de Leon, or, going to the East, Belisarius and Heraclius, Leo the Great and Basil the Bulgar-Slayer, or the Christian Medieval rulers of Serbia—Stephan Dusan and Prince ...
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Galt’s Glitch
Is Atlas shrugging in Brazil? This just in: A massive power failure blacked out Brazil's two largest cities and other parts of Latin America's biggest nation for more than two hours late Tuesday, leaving millions of people in the dark after a huge hydroelectric dam suddenly went offline. ...
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For Whom the Bell Tolls
For the Blue Dogs, Tuesday was a fire bell in the night. Virginia Republicans led by Robert McDonnell crushed the most conservative Democrat nominee in decades, rolling up a victory that rivaled Ronald Reagan’s rout of Walter Mondale. New Jersey GOP nominee Chris Christie, whose campaign had been the despair of its backers, won a...
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Islamophobia—or When Will They Ever Learn?
There is little to say about the shootings at Ft. Hood that has not already been said a thousand times in half-sentence bursts—expletives undeleted—on every newspaper site in the United States, but there are one or two questions to ask or ask again. Here in Ft. Worth, when I read ...
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The Fort Hood Massacre
It makes no sense to see Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as represented in at least one family account, as the victim of
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More Resistance Movies
My two earlier commentaries on resistance films—movies that portray the heroism of outnumbered people under brutal invasion by great powers—brought forth a good deal of attention and discussion. It might be worth continuing the theme a little longer. For me it is a high priority of faith that every genuine nation, no matter how small...
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The American Way of Abandonment
When America is about to throw an ally to the wolves, we follow an established ritual. We discover that the man we supported was never really morally fit to be a friend or partner of the United States. When Chiang Kai-shek, who fought the Japanese for four years before Pearl Harbor, began losing to Mao’s...
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Athens and Jerusalem III: Why Rome Fell
Why did Rome fall? To be more precise, why did the Western Empire collapse in the course of the fifth century? Gibbon and some later historians blamed Christianity, which, they allege, not only weakened the manly spirit that had sustained the Empire but also diverted manpower and resources away from ...
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Crazy Russian No More
A quarter of a century ago, when I started writing for this magazine, I was the Russian. Along with the sense of exclusivity it afforded, that simple tag gave its owner a clear run through the 1980’s and 90’s on both sides of the Atlantic. I was the only Russian in any crowd, whether as...
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America: The Movie
Another of those alarming clashes between solid democratic values has arisen, as the Supreme Court has agreed to rehear arguments relating to Citizens United v.Federal Election Committee. In the weeks before the 2008 Democratic primaries, Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit group and creator of an uncomplimentary documentary called Hillary: The Movie, had wished to broadcast...
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Scottish Weakness and Muslim Impudence
The decision to release the Libyan terrorist Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi from a Scottish prison has caused much anger in the United States. (Megrahi was convicted for his part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988, which killed a total of 270 people.) Indeed, many Americans...
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Social Security’s Coming Crash
The welfare state was born in Otto von Bismarck’s Germany, a ploy of the famed Iron Chancellor designed to counter the electoral appeal of the rival Social Democrats. Thus, social security was created in 1889 and eventually spread, under several guises, to many nations. Here, the Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program (Social Security)...
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A Transformational President
Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek, portrays Andrew Jackson as one of America’s transformational presidents, including him in the company of Lincoln and the two Roosevelts. He highlights the crucial events that took place during the 17th president’s two terms in office (1829-37), maintaining that three of those incidents effectively define him. The first (and foremost)...
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Cupidity
The Informant! Produced and distributed by Warner Brothers Directed by Steven Soderbergh Screenplay by Scott Z. Burns based on Kurt Eichenwald’s book “Radix omnium malorum est cupiditas,” Chaucer’s pardoner warned his guilt-ridden audiences: The root of all evil is greed. Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! serves as a latter-day illustration of this admonition. In The...
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Who Are You? The Law of Status
What do veterans, drug users, children, and suspected terrorists have in common? They all have specialized courts to deal with them and their legal issues. Illinois has become the latest state to set up a special “veterans’ court” to handle veterans charged with nonviolent crimes. (New York has had a similar program in place since...
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Quebec’s New State Religion
In June 2005, the National Assembly of Quebec adopted Bill 95, which changed the nature of religious and moral teaching in all schools across Quebec. Before 2008, parents could choose between Catholic, Protestant, and nonreligious options. Now all students in both public and private schools are required by law to take a course on religious...
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Father Abraham: Conservative?
The bicentenary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln has seen the publication of a host of new books and magazine articles celebrating the legacy of the 16th president. Lincoln’s popularity is probably at its highest point thus far, and Honest Abe is defended by writers on both ends of the political spectrum. Liberals have been...
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The Sibel Edmonds Story
Sibel Edmonds is a former translator for the FBI—and she’s a tease. And I don’t just mean the seductive allure of her dark good looks. For years, she’s been hinting at the vastness of the story she’s been sitting on, letting it out in dribs and drabs, like Chinese water torture. But now, at last,...
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Pulling the Wool Over Their Eyes: A Straussian Memoir
You may be taken aback by the first part of my title, but do not be. Wool, after all, is that which warms us. In the Ice Age, pulling wool over the eyes was tantamount to survival. That sense lingers in the phrase “pull the wool over your eyes”—or their eyes, as we say, referring...
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Saving French in Quebec: When Language Isn’t Enough
In 1976, when the separatist Parti Québécois (PQ) won the majority of seats in Quebec’s National Assembly, giving it control of the provincial government, many thought that the party’s goal was to save French culture and the French language in Canada. It is, however, much more complicated than that. The PQ was founded in 1967...
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Unhappy Anniversary
The one-year anniversary of the 2008 global financial-market implosion passed with little fanfare. With the U.S. stock market soaring throughout the spring and summer, the Pollyannas of the American media preferred to focus their attention on the return of good times while ignoring all that ancient ugliness of last year. In September 2008, at the...
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How the West Was Restored
He had finally done it. He had mastered the physics of time. He was ready to visit the past. He had made his first fortune in U.S. Treasury bond futures in the early 1980’s. Wall Street had thought that the Reagan tax cuts would drive up interest rates because of budget deficits. But he knew...
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Once There Was a War
“Sut mae? Sut rydych chi?” I’m going to assume that most readers did not understand those phrases, which translate roughly to “How are you? How are things going?” And that lack of comprehension is a critical historical fact, because, if a generation of British historians and archaeologists is correct, then you should have no problem...
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On the Death of Newspapers
This past week, word came to me that a close friend and book-review editor of a major daily newspaper had been laid off after 16 years of service. The book page, one of the nation’s best, would be reduced by half, and his “replacement” would be a youngster from the city desk, a competent young...
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Another Republican Retreats
It’s hard to know whether the dirty bomb the Washington Post detonated two months before the Virginia gubernatorial election will affect the outcome of the race. The Post dropped it August 30, instead of October 10 or 15, when it would have done maximum damage to its target, Republican Bob McDonnell. Other issues, such as...
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The Flying Tigers
The first “paper & stick” model airplane I ever made was a Curtiss P-40 Warhawk. I painted it in the color scheme of the famed Flying Tigers, including the shark’s mouth on the cowl and air scoop. Mine was powered not by a 1040 horsepower V-12 Allison but by a rubber band that I wound...
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A Cautionary Tale
When pro-life activist James Pouillon was murdered in Owosso, Michigan, on September 11, I read a few dozen accounts from both national and Michigan news sources and quickly decided I had a handle on the story. Harlan Drake, the man who has admitted to murdering Pouillon, seems deeply disturbed, and he had murdered another man...
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Breakfast With Bin Laden
I sat down to write this column in the Big Bagel, as I call New York City, and it was to be about the latest hagiography of Winston Churchill, a man I not only dislike but consider to be a war criminal par excellence. Then I heard the sirens outside my house and was deafened...
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Something to Remember
Francis Parkman concluded his monumental account of France and England in North America with the Peace of Paris of 1763, by which France ceded Quebec, once and for all, to the British Empire. In an uncharacteristically smug observation on the aftermath, Parkman described the French Canadians as “a people bereft of every vestige of civil...
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Don’t Give Up the Ship
From two until almost four o’clock on a sunny afternoon in June 1967, in the Eastern Mediterranean, Israeli jets and motor torpedo boats mercilessly pounded the virtually defenseless U.S.S. Liberty, killing 34 sailors, seriously wounding 171 (two thirds of the crew), and leaving the ship with a nine-degree list and a huge torpedo hole in...
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Race and Racism: A Brief History
Today, many Americans presume that the debate over slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries turned on the question of race. Though race was an ingredient in the Great Debate, it was no more than a pinch of salt. Both proponents and opponents of slavery tended to hold the same view of blacks. The superiority...
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It’s the Culture, Stupid!
“Karl Marx was a mighty prophet.” —George Bernard Shaw Following the failure of the neo-con-laden Bush administration and the neo-con-led McCain campaign, it is clear that whatever the American right is doing is not working. A variety of authors have offered a variety of explanations to bewildered American conservatives of what went wrong and where...
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The Duopolists
The two major parties, as Judge Richard Posner writes, “exert virtually complete control over American government.” They are what economists call a duopoly. Does the duopoly do a reasonable job of presenting candidates the people want? Is there any hope of electing a candidate favored by a majority of the American people? To find out...
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What Now?
According to The New Yorker (September 27), “America did not plunge into an economic abyss” because of the government’s “bold stroke” guaranteeing money-market funds and flipping Goldman Sachs into a bank holding company. “The reprieve bought enough time for the reemergence of reason over unbridled fear.” Massive government spending and guarantees are now propping up...
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Breakfast With Bin Laden
I sat down to write this column in the Big Bagel, as I call New York City, and it was to be about the latest hagiography of Winston Churchill, a man I not only dislike but consider to be a war ...
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Cupidity
A review of The Informant! (produced and distributed by Warner Brothers; directed by Steven Soderbergh; screenplay by Scott Z. Burns based on Kirt Eichenwald’s book) “Radix omnium malorum est cupiditas,” Chaucer’s pardoner warned his guilt-ridden audiences: The root of all evil is greed. Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! serves as a latter-day illustration of this admonition....
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Race and Racism: A Brief History
Today, many Americans presume that the debate over slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries turned on the question of race. Though race was an ingredient in the Great Debate, it was no more than a pinch of salt. Both proponents and opponents of slavery tended to hold the same view of blacks. The superiority...
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Something to Remember
Francis Parkman concluded his monumental account of France and England in North America with the Peace of Paris of 1763, by which France ceded Quebec, once and for all, to the British Empire. In an uncharacteristically smug observation on the aftermath, Parkman described the French Canadians as “a people bereft of every vestige of civil...
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The Sibel Edmonds Story
Sibel Edmonds is a former translator for the FBI—and she’s a tease. And I don’t just mean the seductive allure of her dark good looks. For years, she’s been hinting at the vastness of the story she’s been sitting ...
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What Now?
According to The New Yorker (September 27), “America did not plunge into an economic abyss” because of the government’s “bold stroke” guaranteeing money-market funds and flipping Goldman Sachs into a bank holding company. “The reprieve bought enough ...
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The Fruits of Intervention
If we had it to do over, would we send an army into Afghanistan to build a nation? Would we invade Iraq? While these two wars have cost 5,200 dead, a trillion dollars and a divided America facing an endless war, what have we won? Gen. Stanley McChrystal needs 40,000 to 80,000 more troops, or...
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Comeback Time for Christians
The Holy Father—Pope Benedict XVI—offers to let Episcopalians and other Anglicans of Catholic disposition join the Roman Catholic Church, while retaining characteristics of their Anglican identity. And who in the booming pagan market cares a flying broomstick what the pope does about anything? Not the Wiccans, an estimated 340,000 strong. ...