Knowing what is going on in the Hobbesian world of international politics is an essential function of the state apparatus. Detecting, assessing, and countering external threats, real and potential, helped the Byzantine empire survive a thousand years longer than its Western counterpart—well beyond its strictly geopolitical potential for endurance. Essential to its longevity was its...
Category: Columns
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Marvelous Exhibitions
Nocturnal Animals Produced by Fade to Black Productions Directed and written by Tom Ford, based on Austin Wright’s novel Tony and Susan Distributed by Focus Features Doctor Strange Produced by Marvel and Disney Studios Directed and written by Scott Derrickson Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Erstwhile fashion designer turned film director Tom Ford seems to...
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From This Culture, They Say You Are Leaving
The statistics that break down the consumption of music into types and groups are not very comforting to consider. But if we really want to know what the musical situation is, rather than to entertain a fantasy of what it ought to be, we would have to acknowledge the realities of musical art in our...
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Butch O’Hare
For years I taught a course on the history of World War II. I liked to ask the students if any of them had ever flown into Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Invariably, one or more in each class had. This was not surprising, because for the last 40 or 50 years O’Hare has been the...
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Why Fake News Matters
Fake news, as I discussed last month (“Faking It,” The Rockford Files), is a very real problem, though less for the reasons commonly given (the potentially destructive effects it may have on our “democracy”) and more for the fact that it both flows from a lack of concern for truth (and thus says something about...
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Beyond the Idiot Box
Call me old fashioned, and I will thank you for the compliment. Call me a fool for rosy nostalgia, and more thanks will be in order. Yes, Fred and Ginger are my favorite movie couple, and last year while recuperating from a broken leg, I watched four of their movies back to back, shown on...
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Buddha Nature and Gender Nature
I have decided that the only way to understand American liberal society is through the mystical practices of Asia’s ancient religions. Let me explain. Hundreds of millions of the world’s Buddhists have at the heart of their faith a seemingly irreconcilable mystery. For two millennia, they have been taught that emptiness (sunyata) is a fundamental...
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Dismantling the Empire
History never repeats itself, but we may compare certain pivotal events in the quest for meaning and order in an apparently chaotic world. Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980 and Donald Trump’s unexpected triumph in 2016 differ in countless, relatively insignificant ways, but they share one key characteristic: True Americans have risen against an anti-America of...
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The Special Relationship, Redux?
Donald Trump is making the world go crazy. Here in Westminster, the political and media establishments are still convulsing following his election. And the angry shock at the top is rippling through British society. Most Brits remain convinced that, while Brexit and Trumpism were driven by similar forces, the two phenomena are not one and...
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Aliens: The Good and the Bad
Arrival 21 Laps Entertainment Directed by Denis Villeneuve Screenplay by Eric Heisserer based on Ted Chiang’s novella Distributed by Paramount Pictures Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk Produced by Film4 and TriStar Pictures Directed by Ang Lee Screenplay by Jean-Christophe Castelli from Ben Fountain’s novel Distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing When is the last time you...
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Opera: Grand and Not So Grand
People sometimes seem to be prejudiced against opera for reasons that are arbitrarily unconvincing. These reasons turn out to be an antipathy based on class (opera is the province of the privileged), or antipathy resulting from sheer musical ignorance. (Trained voices don’t appeal to the contemporary ear.) These two specious reasons are important because the...
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Faking It
If one were to believe the mainstream media—and who doesn’t believe the mainstream media?—Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th President of these United States this month because over 60 million Americans are unable, and possibly unwilling, to tell the difference between true, objective reporting, filled with facts and designed only to help...
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Unhinged
It had the same effect on them that a man sitting in a front-row seat and banging a gong has on the lead flutist in a Mozart concert. “Them,” needless to say, are the “elites,” a poor description if ever there was one of the rabble that is Hollywood types, engaged ladies who lunch, cheap...
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Middle American Revolution Begins
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...
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Christmas Fruitcakes
Angela Merkel isn’t as nutty as she sounds, or so she would have you to believe. She simply wants to have her Obst kuchen (“fruitcake”) and eat it too. The Obst kuchen, in this case, is liberalism, whereby people from every tribe under heaven—including the Islamic ones—live happily together in the Motherland, and all ethnic,...
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Global Challenges in 2017
In terms of any traditionally understood calculus of national security, the United States is the most invulnerable country in the world. America is armed to the teeth, sheltered on two sides by oceans, and supremely capable of projecting her power to the distant shores. Unlike Russia, China, and India, she has no territorial disputes with...
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A Useful Tool
The Birth of a Nation Produced by Argent Pictures Directed by Nate Parker Screenplay by Nate Parker and Jean Celestine Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures Nate Parker has entitled his debut film The Birth of a Nation. He chose his title as a rebuke of D.W. Griffith’s groundbreaking 1915 film. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation...
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The Twilight’s Last Gleaming
There are so many difficulties with our National Anthem that it’s hard to keep up with them all. But the explicit question that it asks—whether we see the Stars and Stripes still flying after the twilight’s last gleaming—is actually a pertinent question today, and not only one about the bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1814....
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Corsair Ace Ken Walsh
Americans have always loved their real-life Horatio Alger characters. They fired our imagination as children and were worthy of emulating. I hate to see many of those who were an inspiration to me disappear from our histories. A perfect example is Kenneth Ambrose Walsh. Ken Walsh was born in 1916 in Brooklyn, New York. His...
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Taking Back the Culture
By the time you read this, “the most important election of our lifetime” will be headed for the history books. If the last six most important elections of our lifetime are any indication, however, we will once again have a chance to vote in the most important election of our lifetime in 2020. Or perhaps...
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How to Win Fame and Fortune
American writers are on a roll. Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize for Literature (for backward children), and Paul Beatty the Booker Prize, the first American to do so because only Brits were considered in previous years. Beatty was the unanimous choice, and it’s easy to see why: He’s a black American, the book is...
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Ashton Carter’s Flawed Strategy
There are two important lessons of history for an imperial strategist who wants to avoid the trap of overreach. The first is not to risk engagement in a new theater while an old crisis remains unresolved. Philip II of Spain sent the Armada to her doom while the rebellion in the Low Countries was still...
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Don’t Dismiss the Freaks and Geeks
“For heaven’s sake man, go!” roared David Cameron on June 29. He sounded like a bad actor in an historical drama—which, in a sense, he was. Cameron was shouting across the dispatch box in the House of Commons, imploring Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to resign. It was less than a week after Brexit, and Cameron...
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Of Wrath, Lies, and Heroes
Snowden Produced by Endgame Entertainment Directed by Oliver Stone Screenplay by Kieran Fitzgerald and Oliver Stone Distributed by Open Road Films Sully Produced by Malpaso Productions Directed by Clint Eastwood Screenplay by Todd Komarnicki Distributed by Warner Brothers Anyone Hillary Clinton hates usually wins my admiration by default. Edward Snowden, then, should be at the...
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Music Sounded Out
Now, you know I am indulging myself when I think of the nominated topic and come up with examples that are all piano recordings! That’s a limitation within a limitation, and I admit it. And I am also aware that when we talk about sound, I am supposed to make noises like a hi-fi buff,...
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Our Corner of the Vineyard
Nolite confidere in principibus. The voice of the Psalmist speaks to us down through the ages: “Put not your trust in princes: In the children of men, in whom there is no salvation.” We can be forgiven if we find those words more relevant than usual in this particular election year. But it would be...
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Yes, You’re Next
A bunch of charlatans and clowns met in Athens, Greece, at the end of September and, to use an old Greek expression, managed to make a hole in the water. In other words, they accomplished nada, but they stuffed themselves with feta and tasty Greek food, stayed at the best hotels, accepted honorariums, pumped up...
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Obama and the Cool Kids
The world will little remember what Barack Obama said during his disappointing presidency, despite his messianic promise and his reputation as rhetor par excellence. His words were not memorable to begin with. (Try to recall a quotation, apart from his famous campaign slogan.) More significantly, his words were not intended to be remembered. They served...
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The Summer of Erdogan’s Content
Combining elements of the Reichstag fire, the Night of the Long Knives, and Stalin’s Great Purge, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan took full advantage of the failed coup of July 15—a “gift from Allah,” as he put it—to execute a countercoup that has enabled him to purge all of his enemies, real or imagined. Within...
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Clichés Revived
Hell or High Water Produced by Film 44 Directed by David Mackenzie Screenplay by Taylor Sheridan Distributed by CBS Pete’s Dragon Produced and distributed by Walt Disney Productions Directed and written by David Lowery Hell or High Water has won extravagant praise from mainline film reviewers. This, I suspect, has to do more with its...
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All That Jazz
Extraordinary writing about music doesn’t come along very often, as I have been forced to notice by my own experience—as have my own put-upon readers! But in the realm of classical music, I would suggest that Donald F. Tovey’s Essays in Musical Analysis is an imposing composition, a stunt of writing—the freight of its assertions...
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The Gunfighter: Myth or Reality?
The reality of the Old West does not sit well with many in academe, who take pride in thinking they are debunking what they call cherished myths of the American people. I think this is especially the case when talking about gunfighters. There is clearly an impulse to attempt to destroy what most of us...
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Incalculable Rewards
Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect. —Romans 12:2 While Mother Teresa was still alive, few who knew of her doubted that she would eventually...
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Loathing Beauty
I recently wrote a column for the London Spectator extolling the beauty of one of the Olympic competitors, a British high jumper. She was 19, café au lait, and did not win any medals. But she had wonderful poise, looked very feminine, and had an innocent way about her. Her name is Morgan Lake, and...
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Donald Trump and Conservatism
Donald Trump has shattered the false consensus of the Republican Party, the hitherto unrecognized tautology that GOP is conservative because conservative is GOP, and vice versa. In the process, we’ve been confronted by an embarrassing reality: We really have no idea what we mean by the word conservative. There can be little doubt that Hillary...
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Confronting Jihad
Paris (twice in ten months), San Bernardino, Brussels, Orlando, Nice, Ansbach, Munich, Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray: Hundreds of people blown up, pulverized, shot, knifed. Who is next? That such attacks will continue is certain. That the political class has no strategic blueprint for dealing with the scourge of jihad terrorism is obvious. That all Western security services have...
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Brexit: What Now?
It’s been quite a summer in the United Kingdom. On June 23, we the British people surprised everyone—including, perhaps most of all, ourselves—by voting to leave the European Union. That wasn’t meant to happen. All year, the E.U. referendum polls had shown a consistent advantage for the pro-E.U. “Remain” side. Celebrities and important people spent...
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Counting on Rosary Beads
The Legend of Tarzan Produced by Jerry Weintraub Productions Directed by David Yates Screenplay by Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer from the Edgar Rice Burroughs stories Distributed by Warner Brothers The Conjuring 2 Produced by New Line Cinema Directed by James Wan Screenplay by Carey and Chad Hayes Distributed by Warner Brothers The Legend of...
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Another Touch of the Bubbly
Well, after 50 years and more in New York, I have heard the fat lady sing, and I know what that means. There have been some issues as the decades have zipped by, I must say; and I have dealt with the problems seriatim—riots, street crime, altercations, the murder of an elderly benefactor, and other...
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Of Sam and Siddiqui
“You know,” he said, “I wouldn’t have let your family in, either.” Standing in a conference room at the Congress Hotel in downtown Chicago, Sam held my gaze in that sideways glance of his, waiting to gauge my reaction. “I understand,” I said. “And I agree. You shouldn’t have. But I’m here now, so let’s...
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Not Nice
The Negresco is a beautiful rococo, belle époque hotel built around the turn of the last century on La Promenade des Anglais in Nice, in the south of France. Even under today’s plebeian standards, when backpacking and sandal-wearing tourists invade its elegant quarters, it stands as a monument to a world that no longer exists. ...
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A Question of Identity
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,...
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We’re All Extremists Now
The timing of Omar Mateen’s shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub was rotten for the Obama administration, because Secretary of State John Kerry had just published his carefully worded Joint Strategy on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), in which the word religion or religious appears nine times, but Islam, Islamist, and Muslim appear nary a-once. The administration’s...
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Survivors and Liars
Lauren Stratford might be called the woman who never was, or rather the woman whose existence we dare not admit. Even the soberest retelling of her fantastic story makes nonsense of so many contemporary assumptions and pieties. Over the last generation, ideas about child abuse have grown to the status of social orthodoxy in the...
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England’s Independence Day
The Brexit referendum of June 23 was a momentous event, comparable in long-term implications to the fall of the Berlin Wall a generation ago. It laid bare the yawning gap between the London-based political machine and the alienated and angry majority of “left-behind” citizens. Thanks to outgoing prime minister David Cameron’s miscalculation, the masses seized...
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Under Circe’s Spell
Love and Friendship Produced by Westerly Films Written and directed by Whit Stillman from Jane Austen’s Lady Susan Distributed by Roadside Attractions and Amazon Studios Whit Stillman’s new film, Love and Friendship, is an adaptation of Jane Austen’s epistolary novella Lady Susan, an early and somewhat unfinished work she wrote when she was all of...
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Get in Deep
Although music doesn’t have an obvious link with golf, I say it does, so that I can contradict myself immediately. The late Sam Snead was and still is well known for his beautiful swing, which he related explicitly to waltz-time, and more than once. Tempo and rhythm were aspects of motion, as he saw the...
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An Aroused Populace—With Guns
At the Pulse nightclub on June 16, Omar Seddique Mateen, a Muslim on his own personal jihad, opened fire on the crowd of more than 300. No one shot back. Some tried to hide in the bathrooms. One of those in a bathroom texted his mother, “He’s coming. I’m gonna die.” He was right. Mateen...
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Islam, Period
“The beginning of wisdom,” Confucius said, “is to call things by their proper name.” Donald Trump’s aphorisms are unlikely to make their way into fortune cookies, much less to go down in history, but on this point he and the great Chinese sage would seem to agree. In the wake of Omar Mateen’s massacre of...
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Playing Games With “Islam”
Dancing around an unpleasant reality is what politics is all about nowadays—Donald Trump excluded—with political correctness the enveloping cloud that hides truth and the facts. There are boundaries that are set by those faceless gray men and women none of us ever see, those who control the networks, the newspapers, and the academy—in other words,...