President Donald Trump on September 7 abruptly cancelled secret meetings with unnamed Taliban representatives and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Citing a deadly bombing in Kabul a few days earlier, Trump also said he was cancelling the talks with the Taliban that started a year ago in Qatar. Those talks focused on four key issues: a...
The postwar American conservative movement had many factions, but most at least feigned to revere British statesman Edmund Burke. Those who read the movement’s books and magazines were told Burke abhorred radical change, and so should we. In practice, however, most movement conservatives proved powerless to stop the many radical changes America has seen since...
The U.S. is about to make a disastrous blunder in its terrorism policies. In recent months, a series of savage shootings has drawn attention to the dangers posed by far-right, or white-supremacist, terrorism. Commentators from across the political spectrum have demanded a robust response, and law enforcement agencies are clearly listening. In principle, such a...
The English actor Beatrice Lillie had no inkling of 2019’s sweltering summer heat in 1931 when she debuted Noël Coward’s ditty “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” in the Broadway musical The Third Little Show. The song’s mocking refrain, “Mad dogs and Englishmen/ Go out in the midday sun,” expressed a sentiment normal Americans subscribed to during...
Where’d You Go, Bernadette Produced and distributed by Annapurna Pictures; Written and directed by Richard Linklater, from the novel by Maria Semple Framing John DeLorean Produced by XYZ Films, distributed by Sundance Selects ; Directed by Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce; Screenplay by Dan Greeney and Alexandra Orton Double Indemnity (1944) Produced and distributed...
Sailing in Homer’s wine-dark Aegean Sea, and traipsing all over the Acropolis and the marvels of antiquity, is the best antidote I know to the brouhaha over “The Squad.” It makes these four publicity-seeking, opportunistic mental dwarfs seem even pettier than they are. Mind you, these petulant females wouldn’t know the difference between Corinthian and...
Boris Derangement Syndrome has broken out in Britain. It is similar to the more widely documented American affliction, Trump Derangement Syndrome. BDS and TDS epidemics spread when the media and political classes are confronted with an empowered leader they cannot stand. Boris Johnson, the new Prime Minister, makes his critics so angry they become demented....
Seconds (1966) Produced by Joel Productions; Directed by John Frankenheimer; Screenplay by Lewis John Carlino, adapted from a novel by David Ely; Distributed by Paramount Pictures The Art of Self-Defense Produced by Andrew Kortschak; Directed and written by Riley Stearns; Distributed by Bleecker Street After Life Produced, written, and directed by Ricky Gervais; Distributed by...
A wise man recently said: Our youth love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for their elders, and no longer rise when a lady enters the room. They chatter instead of exercising, gobble up their food, and tyrannize their teachers. That was Socrates, 2000 years ago, which I suppose qualifies...
One clear winner of the recent European Parliament elections was Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, whose party won roughly a third of the votes, finishing well ahead of any other party. Salvini’s party, the Lega, began as a regional party in Lombardy, but won numerous votes in southern Italy, including carrying many municipalities and several...
The topic of slavery and reparations has been much in the news of late and might feature prominently in next year’s presidential elections. Slave ownership taints the reputations of historical figures, to the point of provoking campaigns against their commemoration. Modern dismay over slavery is quite justified, but a couple of reality checks might be...
How many times will naive voters fall for the old “when elected I will shrink the federal government” lie? If our Solipsist-in-Chief can’t “drain the swamp,” you can bet your last VHS Jazzercise tape that myriad new laws, middle-class tax cuts, and feeble protests will never stem the federal Leviathan’s metastasis. With that reality in...
Most Americans know of Doc Holliday only as Wyatt Earp’s sidekick. He was much more than that. He was not only one of the most colorful characters in the Old West but also one of the most feared. He acquired the nickname “Doc” honestly, earning a degree in dentistry and practicing in several towns. However,...
Never Look Away Produced by Pergamon Film Directed and written by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics Chernobyl Produced and distributed by HBO and Sky Television Directed by Johan Renck ? Screenplay by Craig Mazin High Life Produced by Alcatraz Films Directed and written by Claire Denis Distributed by A24 German director...
Unplanned Produced and distributed by Pure Flix Entertainment Directed and written by Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon Cold Pursuit Produced by Studio Canal Directed by Han Peter Moland Screenplay by Frank Bladwin, adapted from the Norwegian film Kraftidioten Distributed by Summit Entertainment The Mule Produced and distributed by Warner Brothers Directed by Clint Eastwood Screenplay...
“Everything in strategy is very simple,” Carl von Clausewitz wrote almost two centuries ago, “but that does not mean that everything is very easy.” The author of On War said it is easy to chart the course of a war once begun, but “great strength of character, as well as great lucidity and firmness of...
Some years ago my friend and neighbor Baron Philip Lambert had my wife and me to dinner in his chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, and the talk turned to Belgian history. Philip’s grandfather, a banker, had lent money to King Leopold II of Belgium to buy real estate in Africa. He bought the Congo. Then paid...
In early June, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt stood on the airport tarmac waiting to greet President Donald Trump. Following the resignation of Theresa May, a Conservative leadership competition was underway, and Hunt was desperate to further ascend the greasy pole. The President’s state visit was a great opportunity for Hunt to raise his profile...
In the beginning was the Word. (Not the picture. Or the number.) —John Lukacs, “The Reality of Written Words,” Chronicles (January 1999) The last time I visited John Lukacs at Pickering Close, his home just outside of Phoenixville, Penn., he greeted me in Hungarian. My knowledge of that language is confined to goulash and paprikash...
Us Produced by Monkey Paw Productions Written and directed by Jordan Peele Distributed by Universal Pictures Diane Produced by Sight Unseen Pictures Written and directed by Kent Jones Distributed by IFC Films Jordan Peele is the executive producer of the revived Twilight Zone series now streaming on CBS All Access. The original series fascinated him...
Early legislative elections in Israel on April 9 have not changed the country’s political landscape. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been reelected for an unprecedented fourth consecutive term and will soon exceed the late David Ben-Gurion’s record of 13 years and four months in office. His Likud with 35 seats will be supported by several...
“Woke” is the concept that everything must be inclusive and inoffensive. Oh dear! Being hyperaware of everyone’s sensitivities makes one a hell of a bore. I recently flew down to Charlottesville, Virginia, where I had gone to university, to speak at a memorial service for my friend Willy von Raab. The other speaker was P.J....
In 1946, the U.S. intelligence community published a series of studies on the current and future dangers threatening global peace, and among these was a surprisingly detailed essay entitled, “Islam: A Threat to World Stability.” Those remarks obviously carry a special weight in light of subsequent decades. I am not the first person to discuss...
The call for slavery reparations is reverberating throughout the land once again. It will be entertaining to watch the Democratic presidential candidates for 2020 position themselves on this topic. They must know the very idea is irrational and entirely impractical, but at the same time they will worry that one candidate or another will endorse...
I once asked a most discriminating gentleman, who had studied singing, which opera he would call his favorite. He named La traviata. Since then, René Weis has lent support to his opinion at fascinating length in his book, The Real Traviata: The Song of Marie Duplessis (2015). In demonstrating the worth and intensity of Verdi’s...
Heidi Waleson’s Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America (2018) is a challenging and enlightening work—one which dares much and succeeds remarkably well. We must concede that we do not often find a work of expository prose to be as appealing as...
I take a lot of pictures. I am old enough to have spent thousands of dollars on film and photo developing over three decades, from my late single digits up until about the age of 35. While I was an early adopter of the iPhone in June 2007, my film photos trailed off almost four...
Mary, Queen of Scots Produced and distributed by Focus Features Directed by Josie Rourke Screenplay by Beau Willimon The Favourite Screenplay by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara Distributed by Universal Pictures Stan & Ollie Produced and distributed by Sony Pictures Classics Directed by Jon Baird Screenplay by Jeff Pope Can You Ever Forgive Me? Produced...
The wind roared all night, darkness in furious motion that yet held solidly in place. It was still gusting hard when Harlan Edmonds’ Dodge pickup pulled into the drive beside the house at ten in the morning and stopped behind my Ford standing with the tailgate fastened in place against a full load. I braced...
In 1979, as John Wayne was dying, his friend and costar in five movies, Maureen O’Hara, went to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to issue a medal honoring Wayne. She told Congress that, “To the people of the world, John Wayne is not just an actor—and a very fine actor—John Wayne is the United States...
Violent incidents, perpetrated by the opponents of a tyrannical regime, tend to enable such regimes to become openly terrorist. They may have been on a brutal trajectory all along, but their enemies’ acts of desperate defiance (or plain insanity) often facilitate their transition to the level of oppression which had been desired all along. Charlotte...
OK, sport fans, get your wallets out and start giving. That’s the latest brainstorm from a New York Times columnist who makes an unconvincing case for reparations to black people. For slavery, that is. And that means you, whitey, or brownie, and I guess that goes for yellow ones also. He wants these reparations to...
“But other men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep.” —Heraclitus, Fragment Whenever an act of violence is committed against Muslims by a non-Muslim, as Brenton Tarrant did in March when he viciously gunned down 50 Muslims at prayer in Christchurch, New Zealand, the left-liberal...
I’m quite moved these days when I meet Americans and they ask me, ever so delicately, “How’s Brexit?” Or: “How’s that Brexit thing going?” Or, “Are you guys going to be OK with the Brexit?” Perhaps it’s politesse, a passing interest in a small country’s affairs. They often wear this anxious look, though, the expression...
My relationship with Barnes & Noble is fraught with emotion simply because it is a big bookstore, among other things. And I am one of those types—an inveterate reader—who is easily hooked. I was once embarrassed when a lady told me that she had caught herself reading soup-can labels: As one who had done the...
What lies at the root of the abstractionism that I discussed last month, which afflicts the modern world like a mania, especially here in the United States? Walker Percy dubbed the phenomenon angelism, by which he did not mean that those who exhibit it have evolved to a state of moral purity but that we...
President Donald Trump’s predecessors have circumvented Congress before on issues the legislative branch had tried to stop. They have redirected resources appropriated by lawmakers. They have resorted to the same National Emergencies Act that Trump is invoking in order to build the Wall along the country’s southern border. None of their actions triggered a reaction...
Hold the presses! More Germans trust Vladimir Putin’s Russia than Trump’s United States. This is earth-shattering news, a scoop like no other. If this were 1969, the moon landing would be a smaller headline. And who came up with the scoop? None other than the New York Times, the paper that first told us that...
Among democratic peoples, . . . the thread of time is broken at every moment, and the trace of the generations fades. You easily forget those who preceded you, and you have no idea about those who will follow you. Only those closest to you are of interest. —Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America During...
One would think the only American fighter pilot to earn the Medal of Honor in World War II in Europe would be remembered and honored, or at least mentioned in history textbooks in high school and college. No such luck today. For those of us who grew up in the aftermath of the Second World...
Last year, in a January 3 review published by the Daily Telegraph, Hannah Furness made some remarkable assertions concerning the presentation of traditional operas on the modern stage. Furness quoted the tenor Michael Fabiano, then playing the Duke in a Royal Opera House production of Rigoletto, to the effect that “the treatment of women in...
The reality of place has weighed heavily on me from a very young age. My knowledge of self has always been inseparable from the place in which I live. My understanding of who I am has been closely tied to those with whom I most often interact—family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and even those with whom...
Vice Directed and written by Adam McKay Produced and distributed by Annapurna Pictures Wildlife Produced by June Pictures and Nine Stories Productions Directed by Paul Dano Screenplay by Paul Dana and Zoe Kazan adapted from Richard Ford’s novel Distributed by IFC Films In Vice, director Adam McKay takes a hatchet to Dick Cheney, joining...
As fall turned into winter, there were unmistakable signs of paleoconservative dissatisfaction with President Trump. In various forums, several paleoconservatives expressed displeasure that Trump had surrounded himself with unrepentant Bush Republicans and neoconservatives; that he was listening too much to his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, who may be even further to the...
Pope Francis, the first Pontiff to visit the Arabian Peninsula, attended a hugely publicized interfaith meeting in the United Arab Emirates on February 4 as part of what the Vatican described as his “outreach to the Muslim world.” The following day he held an open-air Mass in Abu Dhabi, attended by 135,000 Catholic guest workers...
Everyone’s rather angry nowadays. Women, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, college students, college professors, Hollywood stars, Democratic politicians—you name them, they’re upset. The Donald seems finally to have united the United States. Everybody hates Trump and, of course, men. Toxic masculinity has replaced the evil Nazis and their goose-step, and Trump the loathsome...
It would be fun to write a Westminster column that wasn’t about Brexit. I’m afraid I can’t. Brexit is Britain, to a large extent, these days, at least as far as the news is concerned. It has made the political and media classes go mad. Normal people, those who don’t spend their lives reading the...
Toxic is the combination of equality and evolution, of Rousseau and Darwin. Blended together and served upon the paps of public schools, television, and social media, they are the essential ingredients of the gall-milk of the postmodern world. They ensure that every infant will grow into a fully mature Ignoble Savage. Rousseau gave the West...
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images . . . —T.S. Eliot, “The Burial of the Dead,” The Waste Land The body of the hapless American missionary John Chau has...
Hardly anyone thought much about the mysterious inhabitants of North Sentinel Island, whom we call the Sentinelese (because we have no idea what else to call them), until the close of November in the Year of Our Lord 2018. But following a report of the untimely and violent death of 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau...