Short reviews of The Disputed Legacy of Sidney Hook, by Gary Bullert, and The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, & Healing in a Toxic Culture, by Gabor Maté.
Year: 2023
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The World De-Dollarized
A de-dollarized world, where the U.S. dollar is not the preeminent global currency, approaches quickly but this is nothing new—historically speaking—nor is it bad.
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The Political Roots of America’s Inflation Problem
Americans are paying more for life’s necessities, they have meddling policy makers to blame.
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The Coming Displacement of the Dollar
The American dollar will be displaced as the global reserve currency by 2040, and the unipolar superpower of the United States will be but one player in a multipolar world.
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The Administrative State’s Digital Currency Ruse
The government’s digital currency issued through central banks will concentrate financial activity in the hands of the state and stifle the economic freedom of normal Americans.
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Konstantin Chernenko Lives Here
The last thing Middle America needs is an American Chernenko. America cannot afford a dying leader at this time.
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The Hobbes Horror
Life within late-stage American Empire is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
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Catholic Synod on Synodality Flames Out
The Catholic Church’s Synod on Synodality looks like a flop and may be the last gasp of the same failed approach that has destroyed the Protestant mainstream in the West.
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November 2023 Chronicles
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Don’t Let Refugees Be Used as a Weapon
To many in the West, it seems puzzling that Palestinians don't migrate to other Arab countries. But those countries will not take them.
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Losing Our American Minds
America is becoming an open-air insane asylum. Something about modern life is driving people crazy and nobody really knows what to do about it.
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Constitutional Convention Would Open Pandora’s Box
Despite the increasing volume on both the right and the left of calls for a constitutional convention, the solution to our problems is not to change the Constitution or even throw it out, but to obey it.
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Emboldened Global Jihad Is Final Nail in Coffin of Mass Migration Delusion
Open-borders dolts who have peddled the insane notion that "all cultures are equal" bear much of the blame for rising anti-Semitism.
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Remembering Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt boldly addressed the most pressing political questions at a time of deep social and ideological division. His thought continues fascinating young scholars.
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Moral Reckoning in ‘The Masque of the Red Death’
Edgar Allen Poe’s famous short story is a memento mori reminding us that we must one day face our Creator.
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Democrats’ Noncitizen Voting Scam
Across the country Democrats, like New York City Mayor Eric Adams, are pushing for the disaster of allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections.
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The Conservative Double Standard for Collective Responsibility
Conservatives who condemn the Palestinians for voting Hamas into power don’t apply the same standard to American minorities who vote for Democrats.
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Israel’s Lesson for 2024: A Liberal Crackup
The new New Left has the potential to spark a civil war among progressives, especially as causes like Black Lives Matter and anti-police policies entwine with "anti-colonial" and anti-Israel ideology.
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Caring More for Palestine than East Palestine
Even in Ohio, it seems the activists motivated to get out in the streets are more concerned for people in faraway destinations than those in their own backyards.
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Polemics & Exchanges: October 2023
J. Douglas Johnson, executive editor of Touchstone Magazine, critiques Tom Piatak's column in the August issue, and Mr. Piatak replies.
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When the Cure Is the Poison
John Agresto is full of ideas about what needs to be done to fix the broken liberal arts tradition. Unfortunately, his proposed plan won’t work—they're too liberal.
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Muddling the Missile Crisis
The Abyss, a pop history treatment of the Cuban Missile Crisis, revives unhistorical myths in an effort to chalk the whole thing up to American hysteria, and to portray the bumbling JFK as having masterfully handled the crisis.
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Israel, Hamas, and the Death of Liberalism
The bill is coming due for the West’s complacency in believing in that its special inheritance is easily transferable to any and all who arrive from the Third World
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The Ghost of Sherlock Holmes
In Sidney Lanfield’s 1939 production of The Hound of Baskervilles, we have a perfect ghostly reflection for spooky October viewing.
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Steeped in Islamic Orthodoxy, Hamas Is Israel’s Permanent Enemy
It is necessary to be aware of the ambitions of political Islam and to harbor no illusions about its goals.
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Why Henry Kissinger’s Epiphany on Border Security Matters
America desperately needs to exchange activist-inspired utopian thinking on immigration for a healthy dose of Kissinger-style realpolitik.
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Down With Del Marxists
Elites who live in wealthy communities like Del Mar pose as revolutionaries and preach fellowship with the disenfranchised while holding America’s underclass in contempt.
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Israel’s Strategic Dilemma
Israel will face an impossible strategic situation if it enters urban warfare in Gaza. Far from being a sign of weakness, exercising restraint in the face of Hamas’ provocations is the sound and politically profitable course of action.
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Liberals’ Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
American internationalism was shaped by the national origins of Americans themselves, so it’s not surprising it shifts with shifts in those origins.
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The Faustian Bargain of Dorian Gray
Albert Lewin’s 1945 film, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is the perfect selection for this season of reflection about our mortality and the virtues we need to cultivate to make life worth living.
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Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness … Unless Talking About Trump or His Foreign Policy
Too many very public Christians in politics seem to have a problem honoring the ninth commandment when it comes to Trump, his supporters, and their foreign policy preferences.
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Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
Bidenomics holds little hope of saving Biden, no matter what happens next.
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Pursuing Ethnic Blocs Stupidly
In responses to the Hamas attacks, conservatives again demonstrate inept attempts to imitate the left’s shameful and divisive appeals to ethnic blocs. In abasing themselves to pursue special voting blocs, these conservatives adopt a bad principle and a clumsy and embarrassing strategy.
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Shock and Awe by Hamas
This weekend’s unprecedented attack on Israel from Hamas exposes weaknesses in intelligence, fault lines in ongoing efforts to maintain stability and peace in the broader Middle East region, and potential dangers ahead for all parties.
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It’s Time to Change Our Constitution
Conservative reluctance to change the Constitution cedes ground to the left and allows the progressive drift of the nation.
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We Can’t Vote Ourselves Out of This: Organizing a Middle American Resistance
The American right needs a Middle American resistance united in its focus on internal secession and self-government, one that does not rely on national politics or bet on political saviors.
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Biden’s Shameless Hypocrisy on Migrant Family Separations
Team Biden is going to great lengths to conceal data on the high and growing number of family separations occurring at America’s southern border, which have resulted from their bad policy and are happening on their watch.
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Gaetz’s Rebellion Against McCarthy Is a Rational Response to the Fiscal Emergency
The historic rebellion of Congressman Matt Gaetz and other Republican fiscal hawks against their own House leadership was a necessary move in the face of a financial crisis in the making.
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Oh, Canada!
Canada’s government and its premier, Justin Trudeau, betray their true nature in the blunders of the past few weeks.
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Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
Gavin Newsom now assumes the same role within his party that Donald Trump assumed within the GOP back in 2015. It remains to be seen how closely this charismatic deal maker will follow the Trump game plan.
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October 2023 Chronicles
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Divided Loyalties
James Cobb admirably assesses the loyalties of C. Vann Woodward, one of the most influential historians of the 20th century, whose best-known books explored the rise of the New South and the emergence of the Jim Crow regime.
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Against the Black Pill
We suffer an oligarchic, feminizing regime that is hostile to most of the defining elements of traditional American identity. But, we also enjoy a golden age of dissent. Now is not the time for despair.
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When the Center Does Not Hold
The federalism of the American founders provides a way to contain Americans’ cultural differences within the political system and maintain order.
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California Dreaming
Pedro Gonzalez reflects on the rapid decline and potential comeback of his home state—California.
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A Data Historian Looks Back in Horror
Peter Turchin's scientific approach to history indicates an upcoming cataclysmic socio-political event that will shake—or possibly destroy—modern society.
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The Two Nations
Localism is the emergent political movement that presents the best alternative to globalism.
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I’ve Become Anti-American
If I sound like Jane Fonda circa 1968 when talking about America these days, it's because our media and politicians have turned Uncle Sam into a monster.
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Germany’s Right-Wing Political Miracle
The right leaning AfD is now the second-largest party in Germany, according to recent polls. No one expected this level of success when AfD was founded 10 years ago by a small band of dissatisfied conservatives.
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The New Middle East Strategic Landscape
Without U.S. engagement the Middle East is assuming peace and stability as a new balance of power quickly develops.