A few hours before Richard Holbrooke’s death on December 13, Hillary Clinton told a group of top U.S. diplomats at a State Department Christmas party that he was “practically synonymous with American foreign policy.” Her assessment is correct: Holbrooke’s career embodies some of its least attractive and most deeply flawed traits. Holbrooke started as a...
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February 1, 2011June 20, 2022Breaking Glass
Forgetting a Villian
Imagine it is the year 2030, and you are talking to some young adults. To your horror, you find that they have never heard the name Osama bin Laden. As you begin to rant about the ignorance of the young, you find to your still greater astonishment that none of your older friends have any...
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February 1, 2011June 20, 2022In the Dark
Mortal Terror
The Fighter Produced by Mark Wahlberg and David Hoberman Directed by David O. Russell Screenplay by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, and Eric Johnson Distributed by Paramount Pictures 127 Hours Produced and directed by Danny Boyle Screenplay by Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy Distributed by Fox Searchlight Mark Wahlberg produced The Fighter and convincingly plays...
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January 1, 2011June 20, 2022In the Dark
Neocon Follies
Doug Liman has performed half a public service with his new film, Fair Game. By retelling the story of the neoconservative attack on Amb. Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, he has once more exposed how eager these ideologues are to destroy anyone who gets in their way. Unfortunately, he stops short of reaching...
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January 1, 2011June 20, 2022The Rockford Files
A Tale of Two Cities
Of all the cities of which I have some personal experience, but to which I have no personal connection, Charleston, South Carolina, is the only one in which I’ve seriously thought I could live. The attraction is not the climate (my Polish and German genes and my Upper Midwest upbringing make me long for a...
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January 1, 2011June 20, 2022Under the Black Flag
The Swiss Solution
Let’s start the new year with a politically incorrect column by telling it like it is, for a change. During the last week of November, in Portland, Oregon, the FBI arrested a Somali-born U.S. resident as he was about to blow up a Christmas-tree-lighting ceremony in a public square full of mothers and children. The...
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January 1, 2011June 20, 2022The American Interest
Another New NATO
NATO’s new “Strategic Concept” (SC), adopted at the summit in Lisbon on November 20, is neither new, nor strategic, nor much of a concept. The 11-page document avoids issues of high strategy and refrains from conceptual daring. It is worth pondering mainly for what it does not say. Its six enumerated goals are largely conventional. ...
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January 1, 2011June 20, 2022Sins of Omission
The Fighting Marine: Gene Tunney
Though he beat Jack Dempsey decisively the two times they met in the ring, was undefeated as a heavyweight, and retired as heavyweight champion, Gene Tunney is often forgotten when today’s era of fight fans or others discuss the greatest heavyweights. Political correctness doesn’t allow us to forget black champions such as Jack Johnson, although...
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January 1, 2011June 20, 2022Breaking Glass
Europe’s Dark Roots
In April 1945, a world of avengers was closing in rapidly on Berlin. Trapped in the bunker complex, Hitler’s dwindling band of followers faced mounting despair, until the news broke that Franklin Roosevelt had died. The glorious word of relief ran through the surviving Nazi leadership: “The Empress Elizabeth is dead!” However baffling that reference...
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December 1, 2010June 20, 2022In the Dark
Include Me Out
The Social Network concerns Mark Zuckerberg and his cybercreation, Facebook, the website that now boasts 500 million active users and has made its “inventor” a multi-billionaire. On his site, you’re free to divulge your most praiseworthy, intimate, and perverse behaviors to thousands. Merely register, and you instantly become a star, inviting the scrutiny of your...
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December 1, 2010June 20, 2022Perspective
Five Really Good Reasons
Atheism is once again the rage. These religious fads come and go like skirt lengths or medical trends. When I was a child, everyone I knew had had his tonsils out. My mother was more conservative: The tonsils were there for a reason, she said, so why remove them without a good reason? A later...
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December 1, 2010June 20, 2022What's Right with the World
Joe Sobran as I Knew
I met Joe Sobran in 1973 when I was working as history editor at St. Martin’s Press and had begun writing for National Review. I don’t remember how exactly, but the occasion must have been one of the open-house cocktail parties at the magazine’s offices at 150 East 35th Street, held every other Wednesday evening...
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December 1, 2010June 20, 2022European Diary
Leaving London, 2005
On the way to the airport we were stuck in systaltic traffic, my taciturn Charon and I, and the weather mimicked the condition, blazing with sunshine like a Neapolitan urchin’s smile one moment, dourly hawking tickets to the Museum of British Cloud the next. At times the sky was the color of Delft tile, reminding...
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December 1, 2010June 20, 2022Under the Black Flag
Common Slobbery
The only time I saw Bill Clinton in the flesh was four years ago in the London Ritz. I was having lunch with Leopold and Debbie Bismarck and the mother of my children, as I call Princess Alexandra Schoenburg-Hartenstein, my wife. There were Krauts galore plus some English friends, and we were celebrating Alexandra’s birthday,...
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November 1, 2010July 26, 2022Heresies
Mormon Apocalypse, Part II
When Glenn Beck took the podium at his Restoring Honor rally, he began by listing off the names of American heroes and identifying their motivation to fight for their country: “You cannot coexist with evil.” If evil has reared its ugly head, an honorable man, like Washington and Lincoln, must stand and fight. It’s a...
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November 1, 2010June 20, 2022In the Dark
They All Laughed
Farewell (L’affaire Farewell) Produced by Christophe Rossignon and Pathe Films Directed by Christian Carion Screenplay by Christian Carion and Eric Raynaud Distributed by Neoclassics Films After 20 years, we finally have a film that dramatizes how Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Needless to say, it’s not an American production. In the land of...
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November 1, 2010June 20, 2022Perspective
Freedom From Religion
The recent “flap” over the Ground Zero Mosque is the meaningless debate we have come to expect from American political debates, which are a mere exchange of platitudes. The only interesting part is the common ground occupied by both sides. The left says that the First Amendment and the universal human right to enjoy religious...
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November 1, 2010June 20, 2022The Rockford Files
Starting at Ground Zero
Here in Rockford, as across the country, many Tea Party activists spent the latter part of the summer with their eyes figuratively fixed on the former site of the World Trade Center—or, rather, two blocks away. The controversy over the Ground Zero Mosque generated much sound and fury, but in the end, what did it...
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November 1, 2010June 20, 2022Under the Black Flag
Stoned in the Desert
“People were very happy seeing this” was the quote in the New York Times report about a couple being stoned to death after they tried to marry without permission. About 200 villagers took part in the stoning in the Kunduz Province of Afghanistan, including the man’s brother as well as other relatives. It was a...
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November 1, 2010June 20, 2022The American Interest
Neo—Ottomans Triumphant
The Ground Zero Mosque and the Koran (non)burning are but two recent examples of overreported and misrepresented stories that reflect the sorry level of media discourse in the United States. Meanwhile, an event took place on September 12 that has vital importance for the United States’ declared strategy in the Muslim world, in general, and...
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November 1, 2010June 20, 2022Sins of Omission
Dan Daly
A friend recently sent me an e-mail with a link to YouTube. A click took me to a tribute to Col. Bob Howard, broadcast by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams upon Howard’s death just before Christmas 2009. Howard is one of our most decorated heroes, his courageous and brilliant acts in combat worthy of...
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November 1, 2010June 20, 2022Breaking Glass
Myths of Terrorism
It’s been a bad year for terrorism in the United States. Not bad, fortunately, in the number of actual attacks (at least at the time of this writing), but in the continuing debasement of the word terrorism, so that it ceases to be a useful characterization of behavior and becomes merely a propaganda slogan for...
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October 1, 2010July 26, 2022Heresies
Mormon Apocalypse, Part I
America is special. America has a mission. America is a beacon of liberty. America, God shed His grace on thee. We call it American exceptionalism—the belief that, from among the countries of the world, the United States of America has been uniquely called by God to be X. In this equation, X equals whatever you...
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October 1, 2010June 20, 2022In the Dark
2—D or 3—D:That Is the Question
In 1953, I saw a three-dimensional film for the first time. It was a André de Toth’s House of Wax, with that perfect slice of ham, Vincent Price, playing the curator of a wax museum in New York City, circa 1910. Having gone bats after a fire destroyed his original establishment, Price decides he can...
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October 1, 2010June 20, 2022European Diary
The Last Corrida
Paseo de Hemingway goes nowhere now. I was at the last bullfight in Pamplona, the Catalan town beloved of Papa. On a stuffy night last July, I watched as a bull named Andador, with a flick of the horns identical to the one that had secured Spain her place in the World Cup Final some...
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October 1, 2010June 20, 2022The Rockford Files
To Secede or Succeed?
Over a decade ago, Don Livingston organized a Liberty Fund Colloquium in Charleston, South Carolina. One of the sessions examined whether any movement toward political decentralization was possible without at least the threat of secession to back it up. On that subject, most of the attendees agreed: Whether one regards secession as good in itself,...
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October 1, 2010June 20, 2022Under the Black Flag
End the War
The Trinity College Historical Society, the debating arm of Trinity College, Dublin, kindly invited yours truly to open the debate season by defending the motion “This House would get high.” Alas, I had to refuse, as I was leaving for America, but the motion did sound interesting. Once upon a time I was the greatest...
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September 1, 2010June 20, 2022Breaking Glass
The Daughter of Time
There are many familiar signs that one is growing old, but I would like to propose a new candidate for the list. You know you have lived a long time when ideas and theories that would once have been regarded as fatuous nonsense suddenly become respectable and mainstream. Earlier this year, the British government finally...
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September 1, 2010July 26, 2022Heresies
Give Me Back My Frock!
Pastors are sinners in need of redemption, like everyone else. A pastor must forgive and be forgiven, and this is something that the flock must be taught and must embrace, or subtle Donatism will creep in with the latest gossip. Nonetheless, beginning with the Pastoral Epistles of Saint Paul, Christians have also been taught that,...
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September 1, 2010June 20, 2022In the Dark
Advertising Himself
Inception Written and directed by Christopher Nolan Produced and distributed by Warner Brothers It took me a while, but I finally realized what Christopher Nolan’s Inception is all about. Simply put, it’s about how it got to be itself. Or, to be less gnomic, Nolan has undertaken to advertise his own moviemaking skills in...
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September 1, 2010June 20, 2022Perspective
Break out the Booze?
No healthy boy has ever wanted to go to school. I know I did not. Parents who are confronted with a son who has played hooky or feigned a stomachache will sometimes try to reason with him, explaining why it is important to get a good education. These exercises never worked with me, and I...
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September 1, 2010June 20, 2022European Diary
Retreat From Eden II
Last summer the inimitable Taki and I were staying under the same roof at the London house of our friend Natasha. I have loved our angelically guileless hostess for a quarter of a century, Taki since she was a baby, but all this is just a pompous way of relating that, like I this fateful...
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September 1, 2010June 20, 2022The Rockford Files
Who’ll Stop the Rain?
Rebekah wants to be an algebra teacher. She announced this a few months ago, about the time she turned 15. “You do know,” I said, “to be an algebra teacher, you can’t just study algebra. You’ll have to be proficient in math at all levels, through calculus, including geometry.” Only six months before, she had...
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September 1, 2010June 20, 2022Under the Black Flag
Sympathy for the Devil
His writing these last 40 years amounts to little more than a succession of malicious ad hominem attacks on people he disagrees with. His appeal is to those with a dirty mind, who want society to be as dirty as he is, and who are glad to erode barriers of decency. There is a coy...
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September 1, 2010June 20, 2022Sins of Omission
The Man Who Won the Revolution
Every history textbook has a paragraph or more devoted to Crispus Attucks, who, besides being half black and half Indian and one of those killed in the Boston Massacre, was of little historical significance. Nearly everything else said about him is a matter of speculation. In these same textbooks there is no mention of Timothy...
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August 1, 2010July 26, 2022Heresies
Sex and Post—Christian Arithmetic
What is a school? Today, we think of school as an institution or even as a building. But school comes from the Greek skhole, “leisure”—i.e., clear your schedule of mundane tasks and make time to contemplate what matters. It only makes sense, then, that parents who send their children to school, and the teachers who...
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August 1, 2010June 20, 2022In the Dark
The Last Gasp
Breathless (À bout de souffle) Produced by Les Productions Georges de Beauregard Written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard Distributed by Rialto Pictures This past May, French director Jean-Luc Godard’s first feature film, Breathless (À bout de souffle), was rereleased in a new print on its 50th anniversary. It was briefly screened in various American...
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August 1, 2010June 20, 2022Perspective
Looking Backwards
“Whose picture is this, Daddy?” The little blond girl is 11 years old, and, as she flips through the iScraps, her smooth round face shows the first twinge of the questioning mind that will disturb the complacency on which all future happiness depends. “That’s my grandfather.” “Your grandfather? He doesn’t look a bit like us,”...
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August 1, 2010June 20, 2022European Diary
Retreat From Eden
You do not need to be a reader of this column to surmise that the South of Italy is as close as one can get to Paradise without being a Nazi war criminal, in which case, needless to say, one resides in South America. We’ve got everything in Sicily, from medlars in springtime and tangerines...
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August 1, 2010June 20, 2022The Rockford Files
Walk Like an Egyptian
About the time that we moved into our current house, my grandmother gave me a pot of Egyptian walking onions. Winter hardy to Zone 3, they are perfect for Rockford, where many plants that are perennial in my native Michigan struggle to make it through our harsher winters. I’ll admit that I struggle a bit...
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August 1, 2010June 20, 2022Under the Black Flag
Bringing Down Brussels
As everyone knows, Greece became a member of the eurozone on the back of a lie. The colonels’ regime had collapsed, Greek politicians were nervous, and that pseudo-French aristocrat Giscard promised entry to a country that is more Middle Eastern than European, but with olive oil. Entry meant no more tanks surrounding Parliament at midnight—rather...
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July 1, 2010July 26, 2022Heresies
Pharmaceutical Holiday
Can you imagine the FDA approving a drug that, say, increased the risk of blood clots, hypertension, stroke, heart attacks, breast cancer, and migraines for women? And fathom, if you will, the absurd notion that such a drug could be approved for the treatment of something that isn’t even a disease, a genetic abnormality, or...
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July 1, 2010June 20, 2022In the Dark
A Proto-Puritan Robin
Robin Hood Produced and distributed by Universal Pictures Directed by Ridley Scott Screenplay by Brian Helgeland Since his earliest appearances in folk ballads of the 13th century, Robin Hood has been a slippery fox of a hero. He’s a man who thumbs his nose at the powerful while going his merry way aiding the...
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July 1, 2010June 20, 2022The Bare Bodkin
Calling Dr. Johnson
The Dear Leader of the United States reminds me of Robert Frost’s quip that a liberal is a man who won’t take his own side in a fight. More precisely, his own country’s side. Barack Obama seems to hate calling anyone our enemy. It isn’t nice. It’s not Christian, as he understands Christianity. Well, Christ...
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July 1, 2010June 20, 2022Perspective
Lighting a Candle
Many Americans say they are fed up with their government, that “the time is right for a palace revolution.” President Obama’s approval rating has sunk below 40 percent, and the voters are angry not so much with the administration as with all incumbents. But why would anyone pay attention to opinion polls? All polls are...
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July 1, 2010June 20, 2022The Rockford Files
Tea Bags: A Cautionary Tale
It almost seems like a dream, after all these years. Long before Barack Obama nationalized General Motors and enrolled the American people in involuntary servitude to Big Insurance and Big Pharma; before George W. Bush bankrupted the United States in a quixotic attempt to stamp out all evil and to secure the existence of the...
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July 1, 2010June 20, 2022Under the Black Flag
Going Greek
My birthplace has been in the news lately—this time not for tragic plays, philosophy, or wartime gallantry, but for cheating. In cahoots with Goldman (Ali Baba) Sachs, the Greeks cooked the books, took E.U. money, and ran. Once caught, they rioted and even managed to murder a pregnant woman who—unlike the rioters—was working at her...
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July 1, 2010June 20, 2022Sins of Omission
Red Cloud’s War
The Oglala Sioux chief Red Cloud is generally portrayed as someone who chewed up the U.S. Army in battle after battle. He was, in the words of one author, “the first and only Indian leader in the West to win a war with the United States.” This conclusion is based on the Army’s decision to...
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June 1, 2010June 20, 2022Breaking Glass
Designed to Fail
Over the past year, American elites have spent a vast amount of time discussing proposed reforms in healthcare, arguing about the social and financial costs of producing an apparent social good. In March, Congress approved a law that many observers see as a potential catastrophe, in terms of its devastating effects on our economic future,...
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June 1, 2010July 26, 2022Heresies
Let’s Cheat on Our Taxes
As I write, April 15 is still fresh in the mind, and the sting of death remains, combining the current pangs of tax extraction with the promise of a greater burden to come, thanks to the Barackification of heathcare. So imagine my delight when I read in a back issue of a leading Christian magazine...