I often hear it said that America isn’t a real country or that there are no such people as Americans. That’s an easy enough case to make from behind a keyboard, but a harder case to make if you’ve ever been to Europe, where Americans are instantly recognizable even if they’re visiting places their families...
Last Sunday, many of our political leaders, feeling pressured by the anniversary of the Armistice that began at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month exactly one hundred years ago, publicly remembered the generally forgotten dead of the Great War. That war is something any genuine statesman would always keep in...
Eight years ago, I made the case in this magazine that Pat Buchanan has been a “visionary.” That case is even clearer today, with the White House occupied by a man who got there by running on the issues Buchanan had championed for decades and who is now remaking the GOP along populist and nationalist...
The ugliness displayed by the media and Democrats during the fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court is yet another indicator of how far we have come from Hamilton’s conception of the federal judiciary as “the least dangerous branch.” Kavanaugh was nominated to replace Anthony Kennedy, who used his perch on the...
The people who voted for Trump weren’t motivated by the allure of tax cuts. They were motivated by a desire to, at long last, secure the southern border. The organized mob now being allowed to march through Mexico is an all too vivid reminder that the wall has not yet been built. These marchers aren’t...
The primary purpose of a grand jury is to vote on indictments. The Pennsylvania grand jury that examined the Church issued two indictments. Forty-four percent of the priests mentioned in the report are dead; the average age of the remainder is 71. The Pennsylvania grand jury report does contain details of actions that can only...
Last week, a prominent American replied “Of course not” when he was asked on FOX News whether Donald Trump was racist. He added that America wasn’t racist, either. When asked about NFL players protesting during the national anthem, he declared: “We should never denigrate our flag and our national anthem. We should always be Americans...
Over lunch last week, a friend told me about a bumper sticker he had just seen: “F*ck Trump and f*ck you for voting for him.” (There were no asterisks in the original). I imagine the owner of the car will face as much censure as Robert DeNiro did for repeating the first part of the...
Donald Trump is crude, vulgar, egotistical, even narcissistic. He is, at best, verbally maladroit, and his attempts to backtrack from statements that cause outrage are often embarrassing, even cringeworthy. Still, all in all, Trump often reminds me of what Abraham Lincoln said of another deeply flawed individual, Ulysses Grant, after the bloodbath at Shiloh: “I...
Emerald Robinson recently wrote a witty piece for The American Spectator puncturing the pomposity of the Never Trump wing of the conservative movement. At least one member of that wing, the thin-skinned Jonah Goldberg, now the holder of the “Asness Chair in Applied Liberty at the American Enterprise Institute,” was not amused, and he let...
One of Donald Trump’s signature issues during the presidential campaign was his assertion that bad trade deals had cost millions of American manufacturing jobs, and his promise to do something to reverse that doleful trend. As with many of Trump’s assertions, these claims brought only scorn from the purveyors of respectable opinion, who insisted either...
The best speech I ever heard on immigration was delivered by the late Terry Anderson at the Reform Party Convention in Long Beach in 2000. Anderson, a black native of Los Angeles, described how his livelihood as an auto mechanic and small-business owner, as well as the livings of blacks in the building trades and...
For years, the purveyors of respectable opinion assured us that there was no need to worry about the economic dislocations caused by free trade, because such dislocations would be comparatively minor and temporary. In fact, as Gwynn Guilford notes in an important new article at Quartz, even academic economists are beginning to conclude that imports...
Not even President Trump’s most ardent admirers would claim that he is a “Great Communicator,” the title bestowed on the last resident of the White House who could plausibly be seen as governing, at least in some respects, as a conservative. But Donald Trump might just be a great clarifier: His words and actions cause...
President Trump’s announcement that he intends to impose tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum produced what can only be described as hysteria across the admittedly narrow spectrum of establishment opinion. Missing from all this commentary was any recognition that Trump’s recent tariffs on foreign washing machines and solar panels had already brought favorable results for...
For years, National Review has been relentless in its criticism of conservatives who questioned the benefits of free trade, even though the conservative tradition in America has historically been skeptical of free trade. “Protectionist” was one of the most common epithets the magazine hurled at Pat Buchanan during his runs for the White House. In...
After Roy Moore secured the Republican nomination to fill Jeff Sessions’ seat in the U.S. Senate, the Washington Post ran an article claiming that, roughly four decades ago, Moore had dated two teenage girls and asked out a third in front of her mother, who did not approve. These girls were over the age of...
President Trump’s decision to impose tariffs of up to 50% on Asian washing machines being dumped into the United States in response to a trade case brought by Whirlpool prompted howls of outrage among Trump opponents everywhere, especially among Trump opponents who used to masquerade as conservatives. The most revealing howl came from National Review‘s...
As I write this, the federal government remains “shut down” because congressional Democrats have committed themselves en masse to open borders. The Democrats know that they can secure congressional approval of President Obama’s unilateral DACA amnesty if they give President Trump funding for a wall on our southern border. But the Democrats are unwilling to...
Last week I saw an article about a proposal, currently part of the tax bill, to levy a 1.4% tax on investment income earned by private colleges with endowments of more than $500,000 per student. Thirty-two colleges currently have such enormous endowments, including Harvard, whose endowment is an astonishing $38 billion. One might think that...
During the seemingly endless presidential campaign, Donald Trump was often both courageous and decisive, repeatedly refusing to back down from “gaffes” that were unpopular with the media because they were actually expressions of the populist nationalism that won him the White House. Since entering the White House, though, it often seems that, rather than draining...
During the presidency of Barack Obama, George W. Bush generally avoided public criticism of his successor. Bush’s reticence could be read as a recognition of how calamitous his presidency had been, marked as it was by a disastrous war in Iraq that cost thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, wasted...
On Saturday, tens of thousands of Poles gathered on their country’s borders to pray the rosary. The event was too large for the media to ignore, but most news reports made clear how offensive this combination of Christian faith and patriotic sentiment was to those who write the news. In their headlines, the BBC referred...
I have attended many professional sporting events, and I have no memory of any of my fellow spectators failing to stand for the National Anthem. Standing for “The Star-Spangled Banner” is widely recognized as a matter of common courtesy. It also represents a moment of unity, even between fans who will be cheering for different...
With a monument to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising as his backdrop, President Trump delivered a forceful speech on the eve of the G20 Summit, sounding themes that would not be welcome by most other leaders of the world’s most economically powerful countries. Trump identified “the fundamental question of our time” as whether “the West has...
The past week or so has been a sad one in American political life. The reason for this, of course, is Charlottesville, where a woman lost her life and people proudly carried flags no Americans ever should, the swastika of the Nazis and the hammer and sickle of the Communists. The emotions unleashed after Charlottesville...
I have no idea what is the best way to deal with North Korea. But I do know this: North Korea is the worst governed place on the planet. The only thing preventing the North Koreans from enjoying the prosperity and freedom enjoyed by the South Koreans is the evil Communist dynasty that rules North...
Many conservatives have become disenchanted with national politics. This disenchantment is understandable. Strong support for Republicans seeking the White House and seats in Congress has done little to conserve the type of society most of those voting Republican wanted to conserve. By almost any measure, American society has moved steadily leftward in recent decades. Social...
From the August 2014 issue of Chronicles. For years, the media and Hollywood have sent the message that anyone who wants to be fashionable should eschew American products and buy foreign ones. Recently, Mike Rowe, the host of Dirty Jobs, put a different message on Facebook: “If you want to live in a country that...
Last week saw two particularly grisly Islamic terror attacks of the type that have become all too common: 22 people, mostly children and teenagers, were killed after a bomb exploded at a pop concert in Manchester, England, and 28 Egyptian Copts, including young children, were massacred when ISIS ambushed their bus, which was taking them...
The surprising triumph of Donald Trump has produced what can only be described as an extended temper tantrum by much of the American left, which fully expected a victory by Hillary Clinton to be followed by unending political dominance, as the white, Christian parts of America that generally vote Republican are gradually eclipsed demographically by...
Sam Tanenhaus just penned a lengthy profile in Esquire of Pat Buchanan describing how Buchanan’s three unsuccessful presidential campaigns helped lay the groundwork for Trump’s successful campaign this year. Tanenhaus quotes Buchanan as telling the New York Times, in 2000, “When the chickens come home to roost, this whole coalition will be there for somebody....
For many years, it has been a common lament that the official Conservative Movement, centered in Washington, has not succeeded in conserving anything. There is much truth to this lament. After all, American society has moved steadily leftward since the 1960s, and the institutions surrounding a movement founded to stand athwart history shouting “Stop” have...
Donald Trump’s inaugural address was a powerful, straightforward articulation of American nationalism: “At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens. . . . From this day forward, a new vision will govern this land. From this moment on, it’s going to be America First. Every...
Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election was greeted with shock and disbelief in many quarters. My favorite example of this occurred at my law-school alma mater, where students traumatized by the thought that ideas regularly denounced by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post had triumphed in a national...
On Sunday, I got to hear a wonderful Christmas concert by the Cleveland Orchestra. Particular highlights included the three carol medleys performed by the Orchestra: Robert Wendel’s “Christmas a la Valse,” Malcolm Arnold’s “Fantasy on Christmas Carols,” and Leroy Anderson’s “A Christmas Festival.” There was nothing incongruous about one of the world’s premier orchestras playing...
Last week I attended a legal conference hosted by a well-positioned law firm with many significant corporate clients. What I heard there was surprising, and encouraging. An expert on tax policy declared that Trump had been substantially right about trade, and that Paul Ryan’s tax reform package contained provisions that could, and maybe even would,...
The Washington Post, which spent the election doing all it could to stop Donald Trump from becoming president, is now reporting something that happened only because Donald Trump became president: the Trans-Pacific Partnership is dead. The Post story quotes Chuck Schumer, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell, and notes that “Trump’s rise has decimated support for...
There is, of course, much to be said about the election, but here are three quick thoughts: 1) Trump’s achievement was remarkable. He won the Presidency despite the fierce opposition of the American Establishment, including media coverage as uniformly hostile as any major party presidential candidate has received since 1964. There has been much written,...
In March of 1916, a group of brave American pilots banded together to fight for the Allied cause as part of the French Air Force, over a year before America entered the war. They named their squadron the Lafayette Escadrille, in honor of the courageous French nobleman who did so much to help America gain...
British statesman Enoch Powell began his most famous speech with this observation: “The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils.” I thought of Powell’s cogent dictum often over the last week or so, as Rod Dreher (and others) have been loudly insisting that Trump’s moral failings prevent Christians from voting for him,...
As I sit down to write this, on the Sunday afternoon before the second presidential debate, the media feeding frenzy over remarks made by Donald Trump 11 years ago continues unabated. The content of those remarks reminded me of one of the more interesting pieces I’ve read about the improbable rise of Trump, an article...
Monday brought the sad news that Phyllis Schlafly had died, at the age of 92. Schlafly was a tireless advocate for conservative causes for over half a century, from the publication of A Choice, Not an Echo in support of Barry Goldwater in 1964, to the successful campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment in the...
A week or so ago, the Never Trump crowd at National Review was chortling that Trump was softening on immigration. The chortling wasn’t prompted by any genuine concern over immigration. After all, NR was a stalwart defender of George W. Bush and had no trouble supporting John McCain as the Republican nominee. Instead, the grandees...
Most people have multiple identities, and contemporary America is tolerant of almost all of them, including men who think they are women and women who think they are men. There is one notable exception, though, to this general tolerance: people who attach any importance to the fact that they are white. The left, of course,...
Yesterday brought the sad news that John McLaughlin, the host of the McLaughlin Group for 34 years, had died at the age of 89. McLaughlin managed to create a show that was informative, lively, and friendly to conservatives. When the McLaughlin Group premiered in 1982, political programming on television, by contrast, was mostly an exercise...
The media attacks on Trump have become relentless. For some reason, Washington Post headlines show up in my Facebook feed, and it is increasingly difficult to distinguish the news stories from the opinion pieces—they all merge into a seemingly endless anti-Trump torrent. One example: a news story on Trump’s economic policy team was headlined “Trump’s...
There are some simple rules governing modern American political conventions. If you speak at the convention, you endorse the nominee. If you can’t endorse the nominee, you don’t go. You certainly don’t use a prime time speaking slot to try to sabotage your party’s fall campaign. A number of Trump’s foes have refused to endorse...
On Monday night, I had the good fortune to attend the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, thanks to the generosity of a friend who gave me a guest pass. There has been much media-generated doom and gloom about this convention, but the negative expectations generated by a hostile press were not confirmed by what I...
When I awoke on Friday morning, I picked up the copy of the Cleveland Plain Dealer delivered to my house and read the headline on the front page, above the fold: “Killing of black men ‘troubling.'” The article referred to President Obama’s comments in Poland on the police killings of two black men in Louisiana...