Month: July 2010

The brave hope of the soldier who sent 92,000 secret documents to WikiLeaks was that the disclosure of willful, casual slaughter of civilians by coalition personnel (with ensuing cover-ups), the utter failure of

Asked if the United States might send still more troops to Afghanistan, if the Obama surge is not succeeding by year’s end, Vice President Joe Biden answered, “I do not believe so.” So, that is it. Biden is saying the 100,000 U.S. troops in theater or on the way is our limit. If Kabul and...

The Obama administration already wants every child to go to preschool and everyone to go to college.  Yesterday I noticed a cover article in Time magazine taking aim at summer vacation.  It seems our leaders want all young Americans in school, all the time.  Forgive my skepticism, given the long track record of failure when...

A review of Robin Hood; produced and distributed by Universal Pictures; directed by Ridley Scott; screenplay by Brian Helgeland. Since his earliest appearances in folk ballads of the 13th century, Robin Hood has been a slippery fox of a hero. He’s a man who thumbs his nose at the powerful while going his merry way...

The Dear Leader of the United States reminds me of Robert Frost’s quip that a liberal is a man who won’t take his own side in a fight. More precisely, his own country’s side. Barack Obama seems to hate calling anyone our enemy. It isn’t nice. It’s not Christian, as he understands Christianity. Well, Christ...

Public confidence in Congress has plummeted to the lowest level of any institution since Gallup began asking the question in 1973. One-half of all Americans have little or no confidence in the Congress. Only 11 percent have a

The media chitchat these days is of the media itself, and of, Lordy, how'd things ever get this way! You know what way I mean—the way it is now, with right-wing extremists (centered on Fox News and the Breitbart blogs) injecting lies and fables into the national bloodstream and the ...

It almost seems like a dream, after all these years. Long before Barack Obama nationalized General Motors and enrolled the American people in involuntary servitude to Big Insurance and Big Pharma; before George W. Bush bankrupted the United States in a quixotic attempt to stamp out all evil and ...

perspective Looking Backwards by Thomas Fleming views Authentic Communities by Claude Polin Where the Demons Dwell: The Antichrist Right by Jerry D. Salyer news California Ecclesiazusae by John C. Seiler, Jr. reviews The Creaturely Myth by James O. Tate [Karl Rove, Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight] The Path to Modernity by Srdja Trifkovic [Peter H. Wilson, The Thirty Years ...

The Beltway Right is a comical farce. But like the blind squirrel that occasionally finds an acorn, it is right about one thing: Liberal Democrats simply cannot be trusted on national security. That truth was no more apparent than in early April, when an A-list of Virginia Democrats ...

Can you imagine the FDA approving a drug that, say, increased the risk of blood clots, hypertension, stroke, heart attacks, breast cancer, and migraines for women? And fathom, if you will, the absurd notion that such a drug could be approved for the treatment of something that isn’t even ...

Recently, the national media focused its attention on my hometown. As is generally the case when that happens, the focus was not positive. Here is AP reporter Tom Withers, offering his objective analysis of the event: “New York, Chicago, New Jersey, Los Angeles and ...

Back in ye olden tyme, when graybeards would dismiss supposed ephemera like safety razors and indoor plumbing, the wise and knowing liked to dismiss the dismissers. They would recollect the days when urchins barked,

After 16 months, perhaps the best one can say for the Tea Party is that the contempt it originally provoked within the American establishment has turned to consternation. If the Tea Party were composed of real Indians, the elite would be understanding, if not exactly encouraging, and not in the least alarmed or offended. Since,...

A new study of admissions at elite colleges by Princeton sociologists Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford is attracting a lot of attention at Steve Sailer’s website and elsewhere on the internet.  Deservedly so, since the study clearly shows that “diversity” in college admissions is nothing more than a code word for systematic discrimination against whites. ...

The man who seized the White House by fomenting a mood of irrational expectation is now facing the bitter price exacted by reality. The reality is that there can be no “good” American president. It’s an impossible hand to play. Obama is close to being finished. The nation’s first black president promised change, at the...

(A review of The Last Confederate; produced by Strongbow Pictures; directed by A. Blaine Miller and Julian Adams; written by Julian Adams and Weston Adams; and Firetrail; produced by Forbesfilm; written and directed by Christopher Forbes.) Like it or not, movies are the main art form of our time, the storytelling medium that reaches the...

David Frum has now praised Barack Obama for urging Congress to ratify free-trade pacts with Colombia, South Korea, and Panama, saying this represents “an amazing turnabout for President Obama.”  Actually, Obama’s support for free trade is quite predictable, despite the occasional protectionist noises he uttered to win over gullible voters in manufacturing states.  Obama’s true...

The redoubtable John Derbyshire had a piece at NRO this morning on how mass immigration is causing summer jobs for teenagers to disappear, and why our feckless elites think this is a good thing.  The piece is well worth the read, and it may be found here.

If the state is to protect life at any cost, doesn't this imply a financial obligation to preserve the life of any child, no matter how deformed or hopeless, no matter what it takes?  That means a considerable outlay of tax money, and in parallel cases, when the state assumes ...

Authentic conservatives and their libertarian allies have long been a small minority in a larger movement that, for the most part, rejected their radical critique of the managerial state. The “paleos” were singled out for attack by the neoconservatives, that exotic sect of ex-leftists prophetically described by Russell Kirk ...

Not since President Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock and JFK sent U.S. marshals to the University of Alabama has the federal government seemed so at war with a state of the union. Arkansas and Alabama were defying U.S. court orders to desegregate. But Barack Obama's war on Arizona is ...

Tee-hee. Such is the line in liberal circles concerning the federal district court decision striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act on, among other grounds, those of “States Rights.” Including Massachusetts’ right to allow gay marriage without prejudice to the partners’ right to federal benefits. Congress, a decade and a half ago, voted that...

For too long now I have heard that illegal immigrants are not criminals and that they have come to America only to work. Not really. Whether or not they want to work, they have already committed a crime by illegally entering the United States. I am still ...

With the disintegration of the Soviet Empire and the Soviet Union, and Beijing's abandonment of Maoism, anti-communism necessarily ceased to be the polestar of U.S. foreign policy. For many, our triumph fairly cried out for a bottom-up review of all the alliances created to fight that Cold War and a return ...

In these days of political correctness and multiculturalism, the surprising thing is that there was so little controversy when the board of School District 205 awarded a $40,000 contract to revisionist historian Michael Hoffman, author of They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of ...

A review of Vincere, written and directed by Marco Bellocchio; produced by Offside and Celluloid Dreams; distributed in America by IFC Films. Feminists began proclaiming that the personal is the political during those dreamy 70’s of the last century. This, as I’ve noted elsewhere, is a proposition that every sane ...

As I write, April 15 is still fresh in the mind, and the sting of death remains, combining the current pangs of tax extraction with the promise of a greater burden to come, thanks to the Barack­i­fi­cation of heathcare. So imagine my delight when I read in a back issue of ...

The print issue of National Review has a very revealing review of Christopher Hitchens' autobiography by Ronald Radosh.  It comes as no surprise that Radosh praises the book and its author as a

perspective Lighting a Candleby Thomas Fleming views The Tea Party: A Mixed Bagby W. James Antle III The New American Mobby Chilton Williamson, Jr. news Democrats and Jihadists: A Love Affairby R. Cort Kirkwood reviews Who Won the Cold War?by Wayne Allensworth [David Priestland, The Red Flag: A History of Communism] Chorus Linesby Clark Stooksbury...

For those who can yet recall the backyard blast furnaces of Mao's China in the 1950s and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to re-instill peasant values in the 1970s, the news was jarring. In 2011, said the Financial Times, China will surpass the United States as first manufacturing power, a title ...

What Hillary promised an Ecuadorean TV interviewer has indeed come to pass:  the Obama Justice Department has asked a federal judge to enjoin enforcement of the Arizona immigration law allowing Arizona police to ask for proof of citizenship, on the grounds that federal immigration law has preemptive force.  ...

If I could ask our young President a few questions, they would run something like this: “At what point would you say, ‘There. We finally have as much government as we need. To give it any more power would be tyrannous and would diminish our God-given rights’? I sense that you have never asked yourself...

It was another episode in a series of shocking crimes against children. Little Sasha, just three years old, was pulled from the frigid waters of the Pekhorka River in January 2009. He was bound to a car battery with adhesive tape, his body battered and bearing the marks ...

Yesterday brought the news that Christopher Hitchens has cancer.  Of course, the Christian response to that news is prayer for Hitchens’ recovery and conversion, just as it would be to the news of anyone’s serious illness.  But I wanted to highlight some of the gushing tributes to Hitchens that continue to pour forth, such as...

Andy Grove, one of the founders of Intel, has a thought-provoking piece today on “How to Make an American Job Before It’s Too Late.”  The article contains lots of interesting detail on how the loss of manufacturing jobs has hurt our country, as well as policy recommendations similar to those found in Alexander Hamilton’s Report...

It is hard to see that much good has ever come from any of the various declarations of the rights of man.  Such a declaration did not save the French from either Robespierre or Napoleon, and the constitution of the defunct USSR practically glows with liberal enthusiasm for human rights. For some strange reason, though,...