The 1980’s witnessed one of the greatest miracles in the history of American politics and the climactic triumph of one of the most effective political leaders ever to emerge in America. That leader was a woman, and however well-known she is today, she has never achieved the honor and celebrity of her many inferiors. The...
The right’s failure in 2020’s election may herald the start of a new conservative ascension. But it cannot happen under the current Republican Party leadership. The problem is greater than the Republican-in-Name-Only politicians ignoring the legitimate charges of election-rigging and jumping Trump’s ship . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full...
"In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful." —C.S. Lewis Recently named Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access...
If there was any major difference between the presidential campaign of Pat Buchanan in 1995 and his first run at the Republican nomination in 1992, it was the relative calm with which his enemies greeted the announcement of his second candidacy and his rapid move last year to the forefront of the Republican field. Rabbi...
History, in the end, remembers a society more by its culture than by its politics. If a modern American knows little about the dramatists and poets and sculptors of ancient Greece or Rome, he knows even less about their political leaders. The point is well put in an anecdote . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
Stendhal had the delightful habit of ending his books with the closing dedication, in English, “TO THE HAPPY FEW.” The phrase is thought to be a borrowing from Henry V (“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers . . . ”) or perhaps from Goldsmith’s
On April 29, 1993, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs held a confirmation hearing for Roberta Achtenberg, President Clinton's nominee for the position of Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. Like most nominees, Miss Achtenberg brought along members . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
SCENE; Administrative conference room at a major university. Five grim-faced faculty members sit around a long table and stare at THE ACCUSED, who sits at one end, apart and alone. He is well dressed, young middle-aged, nice looking but not particularly handsome. Each member of the COMMITTEE has in front of him or her a...
Donald J. Trump is the political issue of our time. Yet Mr. Trump is, in a very real sense, peripheral to present events. He is a result, not the effective cause; a symptom, not the disease. The significant thing is not the rebel candidate but the crisis of the . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
"I esteem . . . Toleration to be the chief Characteristical Mark of the True Church." —John Locke It is fitting that the most confused and confusing legal tradition in America today is First Amendment case law regarding religious liberty. It is confusing because . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full...
“Isn’t it pretty to think so?” —Ernest Hemingway There are two fictions that most American conservatives have taken to heart. First, that the Republican Party stands for conservative ideas and principles; second, that there . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access to other exclusive features. Already a...
"One age cannot be completely understood if all others are not understood. The song of history can only be sung as a whole." —Ortega y Gasset In The Politics of Human Nature, Thomas Fleming has boldly undertaken to delineate . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access to...
"Satiate with power, of fame and wealth possessed, A nation grows too glorious to be blest; Conspicuous made, she stands the mark of all. And foes join foes to triumph in her fall." —George Crabbe, Thelibrau In the last . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access to...
Politics is like the weather: No matter how blue in the face we talk ourselves, no matter how many virgins we sacrifice to Odin, our leaders do not improve, and the drought continues. The fates who determine the destinies of nations are no more obedient to our words than . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
"The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope for or their foes fear." —T.H. Huxley In political circles, it has become fashionable to talk about "culture wars." The discussions usually touch on the issues of . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access...
“All politics is on one level sexual politics.” —George Gilder Extremists break out of the margins and take power when they fool opponents into advancing their agenda. By politicizing the family and sexuality, the left duped conservatives, and all . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access to...
My last (and only other) visit to the United States was early in 1986. I was visiting the Capitol at the invitation of a friend who, at the time, was working for a Republican member of the Senate. It was on the day of President Reagan's State of . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
"I've got a little list, I've got a little list," twitters the Lord High Executioner in a famous line of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado, and indeed these days who doesn't have one? Abortion protester Paul Hill seems to have had a little list of his . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the...
"Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil." —Thomas Babington For those readers who know very much about Niccolo Machiavelli, the most striking feature . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article...
“Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.” —Thomas Babington For those readers who know very much about Niccolo Machiavelli, the most striking feature of Michael Ledeen’s new book, which tries to explicate a number of Machiavelli’s precepts with...
Sexual Revolution is a pathetic misnomer. The most popularnfeature of revolutions is their reversal of roles: aristocrats go tonthe scaffold, judged by the wretched of the earth. The needynare told that all their needs will be fulfilled. The greedy have allntheir luxuries withdrawn---at least temporarily. In light of thisnsimple . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
Russian sexuality and the country’s general mores have become a topic of conversation in the United States, mostly in relation to President Trump’s alleged connections with the Kremlin and his behavior during his trip to Russia some time ago, which is the subject of the infamous “Steele . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
During the next four years, the Clinton administration will appoint dozens of federal judges, in addition to (perhaps) two or three Supreme Court Justices. In the confirmation procedures for these individuals, issues of gender politics are likely to predominate. Abortion will obviously be one such question, as may sexual harassment, but we should also hear...
When I was in Catholic high school, some 15 years ago, even as the last of the marble altars were being pulled out of America’s churches, the ornate wooden confessionals uprooted in favor of plywood-and-plexiglass “reconciliation rooms,” one devotional custom persisted from centuries before, in the undershirts and blouses of the Vinnics, Patricks, and Marias...
In the “nihilistic politics of the 1990’s,” warns a newswriter for the Wall Street Journal, “party loyalty counts for almost nothing.” The writer means obeisance to the two major parties, which the civics books imply are ordained by God to rule us. In fact, America needs a breakup of this two-party system, which looks more...
One man, one vote. It seems such an obvious, such a simple principle. What can possibly hinder its implementation in South Africa, where blacks are barred from the exercise of citizenship rights, or Israel, where West Bank Palestinian children take to the streets demanding self-government and civil rights . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
After spending several weeks in deep hugger-mugger at the Republican Party platform committee this summer, the leaders of the right wing of the GOP emerged triumphant. Their deeply beloved and totally useless Human Life Amendment was reaffirmed. The obnoxious statement of "tolerance" for the opinions of those who . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
Wokeness isn’t Marxism. It’s the new moral order for the managerial State.
"Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever?" —Zechariah Most nations know all too clearly what they believe about Jews. Americans are less sure. This beneficial uncertainty inheres in the two major traditions that shape American . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain...
After three decades in which the term “liberal Democratic media” has come to seem an almost complete redundancy, many students of American journalism today are no doubt stunned to learn that, prior to the 1960’s, this nation’s printed press was regarded by most prominent liberals and Democrats as a bastion of conservatism and Republicanism. When...
Though I have spent my life in a relatively conservative area of Northern California, the specific neighborhood in which I presently reside seems to be greater than fifty percent pro-Biden, judging by the lawn signs. Several of these signs have accompanying rainbow flags, Black Lives Matter merchandise, and other announcements of commitment to the cultural...
Stereotypes to the right of them, stereotypes to the left of them, the politically correct volley and thunder at every image that might offend the sensitive soul of the approved victim. Dartmouth's comic Indian mascot turned into an unsmiling noble savage, then was abolished altogether. First the Frito . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
I met Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbàn in May of last year. With a few others, we shared breakfast before the opening session of the second Budapest Demographic Forum. He was every bit the “footballer” I had been told to expect. Of modest stature, he moved—even at . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
Alan Clark, who died in 1999 at the age of 71, was one of the Conservative Party's most iconoclastic, amusing, and controversial—yet thoughtful—figures. In a party top-heavy with temporizers and economic reductionists, in an age full of angst, his cheerful disregard for delicate sensibilities was . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the...
Twenty-sixteen was the year when American liberals confidently expected to consolidate the quiet political and cultural revolution they had been conducting for decades in the coming national elections. When the Republican Party nominated Donald J. Trump as its presidential candidate, the apparent miracle was enough (nearly) to cause the Democracy to reconsider the possibility of...
lifestyle; rather, it must be given politicalrnrecognition as an authentic moralrnstance. Tendencies, behavior, and orientationsrnpreviously classified as deviantrnnow demand civic and political approbation.rnThis kind of "identity absolutismrnlends itself to expressivist politics, therncelebration of feeling or private authenticityrnas an alternative to public debaternand political judgment."rnThe "politics of difference" could . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
On a recent Sunday, my church bulletin ran this edifying announcement: "Is cutting health, income assistance, nutrition and safety guarantees of millions of children and shredding the national safety net for children the kind of reform we support? Call President Clinton to let him know what you are for . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
Since the 1960's, American politics at the national level has primarily consisted of an endless search for a new majority. The Democratic Party's embrace of the civil-rights movement kicked off the quest by undermining the New Deal coalition that combined white Southerners with white, ethnic, Northern . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access...
In the early months of 1985, national headlines recounted lurid tales of an impending right-wing bloodbath in the United States. In New York City Bernhard Goetz admitted to the shooting of four Blacks who he believed were about to assault him on a subway car, and he promptly became a national hero. In the Washington...
Representation Ms. Geraldine Ferraro, a Democratic party hack, a Catholic feminist (what a spiritual and spirited concoction, brewed according to the recipes of the Queens-Long Island bourbon culture!) whom the amalgamated USA womanists (the newest vocable . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access to other exclusive features....
David Reimer, the 38-year-old man who was raised as a girl (“Brenda”) following a botched circumcision in infancy, committed suicide on May 4, 2004. As the left rushes to validate sodomy by judicial fiat and “homosexual marriage,” perhaps now is an appropriate time to revisit . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the...
For the past six months the United States has been experiencing another of the racial fits that have recurred more or less regularly across the half-century since the civil-rights protests of the 1950’s and the Civil Rights Acts of the 60’s that abolished legally sanctioned . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the...
Contrary to the claims of a number of mid-20th-century historians of the Tudor age, the Tudors and their servants did not invent the modern state. The honor of, or blame for, that achievement properly belongs to the late 17th-century, the age of William III and the . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access...
In the 1970’s, Mel Bradford and I were teaching at the University of Dallas, which offered a doctoral program in politics and literature. Students took courses in both disciplines. It was a well-designed curriculum and produced some first-rate scholars. Bradford had long been interested . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full...
Less than a month after President Bush unbosomed his latest reflections on political philosophy before the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, one of the latest victims of his administration’s crusade to foster the “global democratic revolution” in Iraq was grousing that what the administration planned for his . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
History, wrote Voltaire, is the sound of wooden shoes running up the backstairs and of silken slippers running down—a remark that implies that the real story of high politics is never what we are able to see but always a tale hidden from public view. Since he lived . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
Less than a month after President Bush unbosomed his latest reflections on political philosophy before the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, one of the latest victims of his administration’s crusade to foster the “global democratic revolution” in Iraq was grousing that what the administration planned for his . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
OPINIONSrnTrouble in the Cityrnby Kenneth R. Craycraft, Jr.rn"In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. Werncastrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."rn—C.S. LewisrnDemocracy on Trialrnby Jean Bethke ElshtainrnNew York: Basic Books;rn153 pp., $20.00rnRecently named Laura SpelmanrnRockefeller Professor . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article...
Psyche haunted the Romantic poets and their successors. Coleridge celebrated "the butterfly the ancient Grecians made the soul's fair emblem and its only name." Coleridge was a Christian. But the pagan Keats, in his search for a private "system of Salvation," said his prayers to Psyche, "latest-born . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
The epidemic of AIDS highlights a crisis in policy on which the social sciences may shed some light. In the process, it may also move the study of policymaking to some substantial higher ground. Whenever we pose a question in terms of understanding rather than resolving, we run the risk of hearing social research denounced...