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 ...
Year: 2010
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Democrats and Jihadists: A Love Affair
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 ...
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Confessions of a Cleveland Sports Fan
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 ...
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Pharmaceutical Holiday
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 ...
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The Fate of the Book
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,
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The Inequity of Diversity
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. ...
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The New American Mob
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,...
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The Fall of Obama
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...
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Conservative Credo: Abortion, Conclusion
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 ...
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Disappearing Summer Jobs
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.
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Obama Still Dislikes “Anti-Trade Sentiment”
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...
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Regional Cinema
(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...
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To Teach or To Sneer
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 ...
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The Constitutions in Our Brains
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...
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The War on Arizona
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 ...
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Double Down: Illegal Aliens and Crime
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 ...
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Is Democracy Overrated?
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 ...
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Winning Is Everything, Isn’t It?
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 ...
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You Say Ásátru, I Say Shoresh
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 ...
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Hitchens and Israel
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
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Let’s Cheat on Our Taxes
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 ...
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A Few Simple Questions
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...
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Tea Party Animals—July 2010
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...
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The Feds and Arizona
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. ...
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Yankee Utopians in a Chinese Century
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 ...
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Child Abuse, the State, and the Russian Family
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 ...
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Abortion: Fetus Liberation Fronts
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,...
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“How to Make an American Job”
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...
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The Elite Mr. Hitchens
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...
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Pharmaceutical Holiday
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 a disease, a genetic abnormality, or...
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The New American Mob
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,...
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The Demise of Human Understanding
Who in modern Western society has not heard of that category of citizens honorably known as intellectuals? They profess to be the thinking part of the nation, the people whose special calling is to ponder public or private matters. Not possessed of a particularly low opinion of themselves, they even lay claim to a spiritual...
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Regional Cinema
The Last Confederate Produced by Strongbow Pictures Directed by A. Blaine Miller and Julian Adams Written by Julian Adams and Weston Adams 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 largest audience and...
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The End of Strong Government?
The May 6 general election in England was one of the most eagerly contested in recent history. At stake were 649 parliamentary seats (one vote has been postponed because of the death of a candidate) for which there were almost 4,150 candidates. Also up for grabs were 4,222 local council seats in 164 English local...
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A Proto-Puritan Robin
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 aiding the...
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The Logic of the Map
Soon after his election in 1844, James K. Polk sat down with the historian George Bancroft and, before offering him the Cabinet post of secretary of the Navy, sketched the four objectives of his presidency. They were to lower the tariff, restore the independent treasury system, extend American sovereignty over the vast Oregon Country (claimed...
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Sacred Language
Your Excellency: Doubtless you’ve read about the old days when our country was dotted with one-room schoolhouses. Well, good bishop, I am a one-man school staff: principal, teacher, tutor, and sometime janitor. My two classrooms—one doubles as a breakroom and study hall—I rent from a local Presbyterian church. My students, home-educated teenagers, sit weekly at...
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Last Action Hero
Arnold Schwarzenegger marched into the Orange County Register’s lobby wearing cowboy boots and confidence. He was mobbed in the lobby by women who wanted him and men who wanted to be him. He cheerfully signed autographs. He then came up to our offices to meet the editorial board. The celluloid dream became a physical reality...
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Calling Dr. Johnson
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...
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Give Me That Old-Time Religion
In my 1950’s childhood, boys and men, hair slicked down with tonic, girls and ladies in mantillas and hats primly veiled with mesh worshiped at small country churches against which lapped the green and white fields of late-summer tobacco. On Easter Sundays, prissy and full of ourselves on such a special occasion, my sister and...
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To Teach or To Sneer
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 as “this little Sacred Band—which had...
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Murder by Leftism
In early May, four people lost their lives when rioters set fire to a bank in downtown Athens, then prevented rescue workers from reaching the facility. Those deaths serve as a warning by leftists and anarchists that anyone who dares to work during a declared strike will lose his life. At the time of this...
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Democrats and Jihadists: A Love Affair
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 were named “invited guests” on a flyer...
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Red Cloud’s War
The Oglala Sioux chief Red Cloud is generally portrayed as someone who chewed up the U.S. Army in battle after battle. He was, in the words of one author, “the first and only Indian leader in the West to win a war with the United States.” This conclusion is based on the Army’s decision to...
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Arizona’s Got Sand
On October 26, 1881, a gunfight erupted in a vacant lot on Fremont Street in Tombstone, Arizona, that would go down in history as the Shootout at the OK Corral. Virgil, Wyatt, and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday stood on one side, and Tom and Frank McLaury and Ike and Billy Clanton on the other. ...
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Tea Bags: A Cautionary Tale
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 to secure the existence of the...
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Going Greek
My birthplace has been in the news lately—this time not for tragic plays, philosophy, or wartime gallantry, but for cheating. In cahoots with Goldman (Ali Baba) Sachs, the Greeks cooked the books, took E.U. money, and ran. Once caught, they rioted and even managed to murder a pregnant woman who—unlike the rioters—was working at her...
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Lighting a Candle
Many Americans say they are fed up with their government, that “the time is right for a palace revolution.” President Obama’s approval rating has sunk below 40 percent, and the voters are angry not so much with the administration as with all incumbents. But why would anyone pay attention to opinion polls? All polls are...
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George Wallace and the Tea Party
Many of those seeking to understand the Tea Party movement have tried to find historical parallels, and one that has been suggested is the George Wallace movement. Both movements have comprised voters feeling that the America they grew up in is being taken from them, and their strength in the electorate is roughly comparable. George...
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Who Won the Cold War?
In his Foreword to Witness, Whittaker Chambers, writing in the “form of a letter to my children,” tries to explain the appeal of communism: I see in Communism the focus of the concentrated evil of our time. You will ask: Why, then, do men become Communists? How did it happen that you, our gentle and...