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...
Category: Columns
Home
Columns
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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,...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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,...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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,”...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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...
Post
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,...
Post
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...
Post
June 1, 2010June 20, 2022In the Dark
Winning Is Everything, Isn’t It?
Vincere Written and directed by Marco Bellocchio Produced by Offside and Celluloid Dreams Distributed in America by IFC Films Feminists began proclaiming that the personal is the political during those dreamy 70’s of the last century. This, as I’ve noted elsewhere, is a proposition that every sane person must resist. Those who accept it...
Post
June 1, 2010June 20, 2022The Rockford Files
You Say Ásátru, I Say Shoresh
In these days of political correctness and multiculturalism, the surprising thing is that there was so little controversy when the board of School District 205 awarded a $40,000 contract to revisionist historian Michael Hoffman, author of They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America and...
Post
June 1, 2010June 20, 2022The Bare Bodkin
A Few Simple Queries
If I could ask our young President a few questions, they would run something like this: “At what point would you say, ‘There. We finally have as much government as we need. To give it any more power would be tyrannous and would diminish our God-given rights’? I sense that you have never asked yourself...
Post
June 1, 2010June 20, 2022Under the Black Flag
Animal Planet
Like the songs tell us, June is busting out all over, and love is in the air. Unlike humans, dolphins can never get enough of love. They are constantly nuzzling and staring into each other’s eyes. And they are known to make love—up to 43 times in half an hour. That beats Tiger’s record by...
Post
June 1, 2010June 20, 2022Perspective
Cursing the Darkness
Her mother said she had been brainwashed. Her daughter had never liked who she was and was always looking to become someone else. Mother is quick to reassure reporters she is not prejudiced: “I’m not against Muslims. I married one.” Jihad Jamie, as the press has dubbed her, is only 31, but she has lived...
Post
June 1, 2010June 20, 2022European Diary
Katyn 2
When, in 1934, Stalin had a Leningrad party boss killed—and then wept at the man’s funeral, railing at the enemies of Russia—a uniquely modern phenomenon, which I shall call state vendetta, was born. State vendetta is somewhere between conventional warfare and mafia violence. Where the narrow aim of the former is to suppress a specific...
Post
May 1, 2010July 26, 2022Heresies
Healthcare Reformer
The empire was beset by foreign invaders and war in the Middle East. Far-flung wars meant more taxes for the provinces and an increase in poverty. Some men had to choose between feeding their families and paying for medical care. Some couldn’t afford either. In the large urban centers, the poor were getting poorer, while...
Post
May 1, 2010June 20, 2022In the Dark
Back in the Locker
As I write, it’s already been three weeks since the Academy Awards broadcast on March 7, and I’m still surprised that the judges for Hollywood’s annual ceremony of self-love named The Hurt Locker Best Picture of 2009, awarding it six Oscars in all. The pooh-bahs of mediocrity voted for art rather than commerce, and so...
Post
May 1, 2010June 20, 2022The Bare Bodkin
Land of Obama
“A corrupt society has many laws,” observed the Roman historian Tacitus. The Founding Fathers knew this aphorism, and their work reflects it, from the Articles of Confederation to the Federalist to the Tenth Amendment. They designed these documents to save this country from the plague of “many laws.” And the inaugural addresses of nearly all...
Post
May 1, 2010June 20, 2022Under the Black Flag
Jewish Antisemistism
“The only thing missing is the sign Arbeit Macht Frei,” said an English friend as we watched a British-made documentary on the children of Gaza. My wife, a German, winced. I did not. Watching a Palestinian father break down and cry while an Israeli official refuses him an exit permit so his seven-year-old son can...
Post
May 1, 2010June 20, 2022Sins of Omission
Lucky Lindy
Nearly everyone knows that in 1927 Charles Lindbergh made the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean, lifting off from a field on Long Island and touching down in Paris 33 hours and 3,600 miles later. He instantly became an American hero of proportions never before seen. He was termed “Lucky Lindy,” but luck...
Post
May 1, 2010June 20, 2022Perspective
Save the Children
Modern Americans are going to live forever. We must believe that; otherwise we would not rise up in spontaneous outrage whenever a stuck accelerator causes a car to crash or a surgical procedure goes awry. Science and technology have made our world not only foolproof but death-proof, or at least they would have, were it...
Post
May 1, 2010June 20, 2022European Diary
Italian Justice
I have always hated students, a class as concrete to my mind as workers were to Karl Marx’s, a race as particular in my imagination as the Jews were in Alfred Rosenberg’s. Visiting a city like Florence, for me, is a painful experience, somewhere between what joining a gay-rights march would be for Taki or...
Post
April 1, 2010June 20, 2022Breaking Glass
Well, Naturally, We’re Gullible
I love Sarah Palin. That’s not necessarily because of anything she believes or advocates, but because of the pleasure I derive from watching the apoplexy she causes in liberals, especially in a university setting. Not only is Palin a strong conservative, but she has a regular middle-class background and a passionate religious commitment. This combination...
Post
April 1, 2010July 26, 2022Heresies
The Art of Spanking
So, thanks again for the love in the cradle and all of the changes that kept me dry. And thanks again for the love at our table and tannin’ my bottom when I told you a lie . . . It’s a tear-jerker of a song, and the only thing that rescues Ricky Skaggs’ “Thanks...
Post
April 1, 2010June 20, 2022In the Dark
A Mortal Blivet
The Edge of Darkness Produced by GK Films, Icon Productions, and BBC Films Directed by Martin Campbell Screenplay by William Monahan and Andrew Bovell from the original television script by Troy Kennedy Martin Distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures In The Edge of Darkness, director Martin Campbell has tried to compress the six hour-long episodes...