Month: February 2014

Home 2014 February
Robertson Repulsion
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Robertson Repulsion

Duck Commander Phil Robertson is the American Establishment’s worst nightmare, and allowing him simply to exist was not an acceptable option for those who wish to form our opinions and exterminate Christianity from our society. Most everyone has by now heard of the controversy surrounding Robertson’s comments as quoted by a snarky and patronizing article...

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The Mexican War

It’s popular in academe today to describe the Mexican War as an example of an aggressive and expansive colossus beating up on a weak neighbor, but that was not the case in 1846.  The war was really a second phase of the Texas Revolution.  Most people don’t understand that Mexico never recognized Texas independence.  It...

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Big Brother, Little Sisters

 When Sonia Sotomayor decided, in the last hours of the last day of last year, to issue a temporary stay on the enforcement of the ObamaCare contraception mandate, she surprised a lot of people, but likely no one more than the man who had appointed her to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Barack Obama prefers his...

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A Vanishing Nation

Uit die blou van onse hemel uit die diepte van ons see, Oor ons ewige gebergtes, waar die kranse antwoord gee. When in 1918 Cornelis Jacobus Langen­hoven wrote “Die Stem” (“The Voice”), the poem that became South Africa’s pre-1995 national anthem, by “our everlasting mountains” he meant the Drakensberg range that separates Transvaal from Natal. ...

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Bums and Bandits

One of the great but perverse pleasures of my life when I’m in New York City is to read the New York Times.  It’s perverse because no paper north of Saudi Arabia lies quite as blatantly as the Times does, its lying based on omission rather than invention, and by the use of the kind...

The Mandela Mandala
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The Mandela Mandala

Every year, the Christian calendar is more and more marginalized by anti-Christian “holidays” and commemorations.  In 2013, the first week of Advent, by decree of President Obama and National Public Radio, was displaced by Nelson Mandela Week.  Since we were only in December, I could not wait to see what our masters will pull out...

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The Technology Mirage

For years, Americans worried about the disappearance of manufacturing jobs were told that their loss would be more than offset by all the new jobs technology would create in the United States.  What’s more, the jobs created by technology would stay in the United States, because they required skills that the Chinese and Mexicans­—those now...

Impractical Solutions
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Impractical Solutions

Mark Levin, in his best-selling book The Liberty Amendments, is absolutely right about two things: First, the Courts, president, and Congress are not playing the roles assigned to them by the Constitution.  The Court is deciding the country’s social and cultural issues; the president freely amends laws and drops Tomahawk missiles on people without going...

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High on Federalism

As the New Year rolled in, lines formed at Colorado pot shops.  Some customers seeking to secure their first legal purchase of Mary Jane had to wait several hours.  Once they made it into the shops they were struck by sticker shock: Top-shelf marijuana (not Mexican ragweed) was going for $400 per ounce.  Of course,...

Take a Hand
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Take a Hand

There’s no analysis to speak of in Bill Minutaglio’s and Steven L. Davis’s account of life and events in the city—Dallas—that much of the world came to hate after the Kennedy assassination.  There is instead chronological recitation: this person, that person; words, deeds, threats, accusations, pleas, apologies, gestures; an amassing and piling up of facts,...

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Numquam et Nusquam

Scott P. Richert (“Returning to Reality,” Views, December) says he’s a Catholic.  He doesn’t write like one. What distinguishes Catholics is possession of a Deposit of Faith given 2,000 years ago.  No, saith Richert.  What’s important is a “lived relationship with the Risen Christ from which those doctrines flow . . . ”  Lived relationship? ...

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Back to the Trenches

Stand by for a barrage of centennials.  For some years to come, we will be facing very regular commemorations of the various horrors of World War I and its aftermath, so expect a great many books, documentaries, and newspaper pieces on Sarajevo, the Armenian massacres, the Lusitania, the Russian Revolution, and on through the 2020’s. ...

Taking Action
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Taking Action

“I don’t just renovate,” says Nicole Curtis, the 36-year-old star of Rehab Addict.  “I restore old houses to their former glory.” She’s a willowy blonde with the body of a pinup model and the determination of a drill sergeant—and she can wield a nail gun as well as any man, if not better.  That may...

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The Buffalo Harp

Inutile asking me why this column is called that, or what a buffalo harp might be.  I honestly do not know, except that it is the name of an old ironmonger’s near my house.  One still happens here and there, in the less progressive European towns, upon those ancient shop signs, faded black or gold...

Suicide of the West (Reconsidered)
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Suicide of the West (Reconsidered)

The elegant duplex maisonette at 73 East 73rd Street in Manhattan, formerly the residence of the late Mr. and Mrs. William F. Buckley, Jr., was recently bought by Mr. and Mrs. Mark Rockefeller, son and daughter-in-law of the late Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.  A writer for the New York Times, describing the architectural and decorative renovations...

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We’re All Racists Now

“For Democrats, it’s the gift that keeps giving: If all else fails, just call Republicans racists . . . ” —Neil Cavuto, FOX News Well, everything else is indeed failing, but the racism racket is working so well that it won’t be going away any time soon.  Al Sharpton sees “white supremacism” everywhere among Obama’s...

That Special Relationship
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That Special Relationship

John Kennedy and Harold Macmillan were the odd couple of the Special Relationship.  Conjuring a picture of them from the cuttings files and obituaries, they seem almost comically mismatched.  For much of the three years that they overlapped in their respective offices, the grouse-shooting British premier appeared ludicrously archaic next to a President who confidently...

Suicide of the West (Revisited)
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Suicide of the West (Revisited)

Fifty years ago James Burnham warned Westerners: Trying to come to terms with communism instead of resolutely fighting it amounts to committing suicide.  Whether the communist ideology is dead or still alive under a new guise remains, in spite of current opinion, an open question, but in any case only the blind or the deceitful...

Proper Books
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Proper Books

Way back in prehistory—1991, or thereabouts—a promising Alabaman author started to register on readers’ radars, thanks to lambent reviews from Northern litterateurs surprised to discover that there was at least one Southron who could not only write, but write as though an amphetamined-up James Joyce was simultaneously charioteering Jonathan Swift, Flannery O’Connor, and John Kennedy...

New Electoral Alliance Aims to Capitalize on Anti-E.U. Anger
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New Electoral Alliance Aims to Capitalize on Anti-E.U. Anger

“Today is the beginning of the liberation from the European elite, the monster in Brussels.”  These are strong words.  But they are not surprising coming from Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom and a man known for his rhetorical flourishes.  He was speaking at a joint press conference with Marine Le...

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Flyovers and Combovers

Nebraska Produced by Blue Lake Media Fund and Bona Fide ProductionsDirected by Alexander Payne Screenplay by Bob Nelson Distributed by Paramount Vantage American Hustle Produced by Atlas Entertainment and Annapurna Pictures Directed and written by David O. Russell Distributed by Columbia Pictures   Few directors would have taken the chances Alexander Payne does with his...

End Game
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End Game

The latest, and perhaps the best, book to be written in the wake of the Great Recession raises an important question: Why is it that America’s self-appointed elite refuses to learn from its long record of failure and futility in economic management that its ideas and policies are all wrong? The answer is provided by...

Out and About
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Out and About

The American Empire has been on the minds of at least some conservatives for about two decades, ever since the sudden collapse of the Soviet Empire caught us all by surprise.  It isn’t that Americans haven’t argued about empire before: From the 1890’s until December 7, 1941, there was an on-again, off-again but very lively...