In failing to mention Communism, the makers of a PBS documentary about William F. Buckley unintentionally remind viewers of why Buckley was needed in the first place—and why he still is.
Author: Daniel McCarthy (Daniel McCarthy)
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Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
Weakening House committees had the paradoxical effect of concentrating power in leadership and making the speaker more important in setting the majority’s policy direction—which only turned the speaker into the focus of every member’s discontent and created stronger opposition to him within the party.
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Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
There’s more than one way the GOP could wind up with a New York-Florida ticket this November.
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Princess Kate and Democracy’s Discontents
The tabloid interest in the princess’s health, is also punctuated by genuine sympathy on the part of many Brits, who see the royal family as the nation's family, too. But that's not how it should be with our elected leaders.
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Can Biden Buy the Voters?
Biden knows what he has to do to win—but the educated whites who are the backbone of his party have little in common, culturally or economically, with the lower-class whites whose interest is in work, not woke.
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Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
Small though the influence of a VP pick usually is, Trump has several ways to turn the right choice into a winning hand.
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Why Online News Isn’t Saving Journalism
Online media was never on a secure footing, dependent as it was not just on advertising—which is true for almost all media—but on the whims of Big Tech, which has its own growth worries.
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Do Americans Trust Either Party?
Americans prefer no consistent government, rapid-cycling anarchy, to everything the two parties offer: neither has made the sale.
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Is Taylor Swift Trouble for Trump?
Left-of-center social and economic attitudes are, for Millennial and Generation Z women, the closest thing to not having any politics: They are the path of least resistance—and least reflection.
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Trump’s Map to the White House
A strategic choice of VP and a party unified in the battleground states, plus Biden's dismal record, might be all it takes to turn the 2020 map back into Trump's winning 2016 map.
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Will ‘Lawfare’ Take Trump Off the Ballot?
Democrats have led their supporters to entertain a fantasy of winning by disqualifying Trump rather than beating him, but the scenarios don't work, and lawfare only breeds strife.
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Will Africa Save America?
Conservatives are right to take heart from Christianity’s growth in Africa. Yet if the civilization that Christianity created in Europe and America cannot survive here, the prospects for Christian civilization anywhere are bleak.
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‘The Sopranos’ at 25: A New World Tragedy
America hasn’t yet fulfilled Goethe’s call to find new sources for our stories—but we still have something to gain from the very best tales of knights, robbers, and ghosts.
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Trump’s Country Party Roots
Aristocracy is the problem, and Americans will fight it with any weapon at hand—including Donald Trump.
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What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
When a politician stakes his campaign on a demonstration of how thorough, consistent and philosophically pure he is, he might impress conservative journalists and policy wonks, but they don't pick the nominee.
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Biden Looks Doomed—But Is He?
Political scientists say presidential elections are referendums on the incumbent. If that’s the case next year, none of the Biden team’s grounds for optimism will matter.
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A Test for Trump and His Rivals
The path to the nomination for anyone other than Trump is exceedingly narrow. Voter composition and mobilization efforts will be key for Trump’s rivals.
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When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
According to a study in JAMA Internal Medicine, as of 2021 women were outliving men by 5.8 years. But the last thing men need is to be designated another victim group.
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By the Time Abortion Makes the Ballot, the Battle’s Over
Pro-life voters are made in pews and pulpits, not political party conventions.
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War in the Democratic Party—and at the Opera
In art as in politics, liberals find wickedness only in our own institutions.
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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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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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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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Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
Bidenomics holds little hope of saving Biden, no matter what happens next.
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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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Biden’s a Loser–but Democrats Can’t Ditch Him
Joe Biden is going to lose to Donald Trump in '24. Democrats can see this but there is little they can do to stop it.
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Do Sex Scandals Matter?
Trump, Boebert, Gibson—or any candidate—might have moral character flaws, but candidates who are personally objectionable are often politically indispensable.
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Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
Cornel West is setting the stage for a replay of 2000 when Ralph Nader peeled off enough votes to cost the Democrats the White House. West's appeal, like Nader's, is a sign of a larger problem facing the Democratic party.
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Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
Trump wasn't on stage in Milwaukee, but Trumpism was, thanks to Vivek Ramaswamy. Will Ramaswamy take votes from establishment candidates, or from Trump himself?
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How America Kills Its Own
America is a worse place for the 50,000 men and women we lost to suicide last year.
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Warren Harding’s Real Scandal Was His Conservatism
Warren Harding is overlooked as one of America's best presidents, not because of scandals, but because he was an unpretentious peacetime president who made America normal again.
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Demography Destiny, for Us and China
Population matters, but continuity of character matters more. Without that, a nation ceases to be.
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The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
Democrats don't want to lose next year, but they have to play the hand they dealt themselves.
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Britain’s Bad Example for American Conservatives
Social conservatism and something like populism are the starting point for right-leaning politics today. The UK's Tories failed by ignoring social conservatives; the GOP is in danger of repeating their mistake.
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Civilizations Clash—in Ukraine and at Home
Ukraine and Russia were at peace until a civilizational divide: one chose the West and one chose Slavic-Orthodoxy. Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis has proven correct—and predicts a similar rift within America.
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Fertility, Family, and Bio-Socialism
A California bill attempts to replace the biological laws of fertility with its own political preferences, to remove the family from the realm of custom and nature and socialize the very building block of society.
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From American Dream to Orwell’s Nightmare
If we shudder at the thought of Big Brother's eyes in our homes, we should also be alert to his hands in our pockets.
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Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
The governor of Florida must translate his ideological agenda into its emotional equivalent, not with this or that policy proposal but with language that speaks to raw feeling.
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RFK Jr.’s Threat to Biden
An octogenarian Joe Biden knows history bears a warning for him. The last Democratic president to be challenged for re-nomination was Jimmy Carter.
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Who’s In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
Liberals have never forgiven Clarence Thomas for refusing their patronage and their leash. As a Supreme Court Justice, he remains an unconquered American.
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Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
Rogue AI has so far been nothing more than a sci-fi cliche, but now artificial intelligence is proving difficult for human beings to control.
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Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
Climate ideology derives its power from its resemblance to religion. But it's a poor substitute for a real faith.
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All the Conspiracy That’s Fit to Print
Conspiracy theories against the right don't need much proof to make it into the pages of The New York Times.
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2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
A Trump-DeSantis face-off in the Republican primaries could be costly for the party, but whichever candidate wins the nomination will need to reclaim the Rust Belt in order to beat Biden.
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The World Bank’s Green Imperialism
The World Bank is the financial arm by which the liberal international order exercises control over poor and developing nations.
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Remembering Michael Oakeshott
Michael Oakeshott warned that rationalism in politics leads to rigid, rule-bound governance, and to the imposition of the state's enterprise over and against the free association of individuals.
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Impure Politics
In criminal law, there are times when a crime has clearly been committed, but it’s not clear whether the perpetrator had criminal intent. The impeachment effort against Donald Trump is the opposite situation: a case where there is no high crime or misdemeanor, but the president’s intentions are said by his enemies to be so...
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Democrats Adrift
The field of Democrats aspiring to be their party’s presidential nominee resembles what the Republican field of four years ago would have been, had Donald Trump not entered the race. With more than 20 contenders, Democrats have had to break up their first two presidential debates into two sets of ten candidates, each airing on...
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John Lukacs, R.I.P.
When long-time Chronicles contributor John Lukacs died on May 6, the country lost one of its finest adopted sons, who was also one of its finest writers and historians. The scope and extent of his work defies summary—he published over three dozen books between 1953 and 2017 on a wide-ranging list of subjects, including: the...