VITAL SIGNSrnPOLITICSrnEverything OldrnIs New Againrnby Janet Scott BarlowrnMaureen Dowd, premier columnistrnfor the New York Times, is possessedrnof a rare professional gift: She canrnbe mean (often really mean) and funnyrn(often very funny) at the same time.rnWhat’s more, her potent powers of observationrnand sheer talent as a writer usuallyrncombine to mitigate her predictablernWashington cynicism.rnBut with the election...
5870 search results for: The Old Right
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Confessions of an Ex-Marine
red or royal partridges. The brace ofngame birds that Marcel retrieves is hisnfather’s glory, except that the real glorynis the father’s promotion from know-allndemigod (he is a teacher, after all, atnthe school young Marcel attends andncombines both parental and scholarlynauthority) to fallible and yet lovablenhuman being. These are issues of asnmuch subtlety as substance, and...
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Celebrating Diversity
The very first day I spent at a prestigious prep school—I was ten—I was punished for breaking the rule that no new boy was allowed to walk on the grass. “Rhinies,” as we were called at Lawrenceville, had to stick to the paths, and the only time we could walk on the grass was during...
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Trojan Asses
tional establishments. The rebelhon finally combined aspectsnof misandry with a new political agenda, and politicsnis, besides the penal system, the scene of mankind’s mostnobvious and most painful failures. To make matters worse,nthe political vision now invoked is the sort of democracynrevived by the French Revolution after a gap of 2,000 years.nViewed with horror by the...
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America’s Dwight Schrute
In an hilarious episode of NBC’s The Office, Dunder-Mifflin übertwerp Dwight Schrute unwittingly adapts the words of several speeches by Benito Mussolini and Karl Marx in order to appear impressive at a conference for salesmen. “Blood alone moves the wheels of history!” he cries, and by the time he gets to Il Duce’s “It is...
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Birth of a Nation
faith; religion is a bond, the fulfiDment of an obligation. For allrnI knew, Slovaks might be less spiritual, less moral than the morerncasually observant Czechs, but the willingness to get up onrnSunday morning must count for something.rnI happened to be in Prague on Palm Sunday, and I asked thernclerk in my lovely hotel (U Pava...
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Chief of Men
Of the making of books about Churchill there is no end. The latest is the best to date. Andrew Roberts reduces Churchill’s epic life to some 1,100 pages, offering a précis of the great events in which he was involved while drawing on 40 new sources. These include the private diaries of King George VI...
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October 7, 1571
Today we give special thanks to Our Lady whose intercession led the armada of the Holy League to victory over the Ottoman fleet on October 7, 1571, at the mouth of what the Venetians called the Bay of Lepanto but what we today call the Gulf of Patras. My good friends at Catholic Answers...
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The Music Mask
then I have sold out. If I write booksnthat whites feel comfortable with,nthen I have sold out.nAs a reader who is neither black nornfeminist, and certainly not lesbian, I cannattest that Walker has not “sold out” innthis novel. The most controversial of hernthemes develops as Celie begins to discovernher lesbian liberation. In answernto Freud’s question...
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Lilliput vs. Leviathan
Circuit Court of Appeals, where eventually the county againrnwas upheld. The decision stands as a legal precedent for propertyrnowners to bring assaults against every critical habitat designationrnin the country. It was another victory for elected localrngovernment against the unclected bureaucracy that devoursrnfreedoms; but, still, we received no concession, no admission,rnand no admittance. If the recalcitrant...
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Pre-election Scandals Disappear Down Media Rabbit Hole
Where’d everybody go? Whatever happened to the Jeffrey Epstein case? Traces of the Durham Report, which was investigating those who manufactured the story of Russian interference in the 2016 election, seem to have also disappeared from view. Or what about Hunter Biden? His laptop full of secrets and the possible corrupt practices of his father,...
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Politics: Goodbye, Dixie
coastal cities. That Reagan paidrnonly lip service to pro-life activistsrnduring their annual Washingtonrnmarches still rankles the party’srnsouthern wing.rnCaldwell is so eager to blame the Southrnthat he ignores even the most obviousrnfacts. First, the Reagan years saw a continuedrnincrease in economic prosperit’rnin the South, a trend that went back atrnleast to the 1950’s, while those “prosperousrncoastal...
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Is Donald Trump an Uneducated Lout?
Columnist Wes Pruden, writing in the Washington Times, calls the presumptive GOP nominee an “uneducated lout.” But give him credit for balance: he also gives Hillary a hard time though he spares her any ad hominem insults. He finds the choice we face in the presidential election this November terrifying, and thinks we should, too. He...
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Sola Scriptura: The Case for the Crusades
“Woe to the Assyrian, he is the rod and the staff of my anger, and my indignation is in their hands. I will send him to a deceitful nation . . . ” —Isaiah 10:5-6, Douay-Rheims Confronted by the rise of insurgent Islam and the political reality of jihad, many Christians, eager to formulate a...
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If My Daddy Could See Me Now
September 11, 2001, we are often told, “changed everything.” In Washington, D.C., and Baghdad, Iraq, that may have been true. President George W. Bush and a handful of his advisors, who had been itching for a fight with Iraq since before the inauguration, now saw their opening. It would take another year and a half...
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The Strange Death of the Yellow Dog
Perusing the conservative press in the days after the Republican victories in the November 2002 elections was like watching the triumph scenes in various sword-and-sandal movies of the 1950’s and 60’s, with the reader almost expecting to see outgoing Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle dragged in chains through the streets of Washington. The Stupid Party...
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Christmas, Texas
I am fumbling in the console, looking for my Jim Reeves Christmas CD, when I notice the wall of rolling, gray clouds approaching from the east. The sun is sliding slowly beneath the horizon in the west, shooting shards of orange-red hues into the purple-blue sky, presenting a striking contrast to the dark gray wall,...
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To See the World and Man
Truthfulness and rationality are essential priorities in the discussion of public issues. Only by renouncing the strait jacket of ideology can we begin to see the world and man.
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Principalities & Powers
Bodysnatchers (1956) was widely interpretednas a McCarthyist film, whichnit was, but it was also much more: anfilm horrifying enough to make sleepnitself an object of terror, it warned usn(like Eugene lonesco’s Rhinoceros)nthat already in the 1950’s Americansnwere losing that individualism whichnwas our primary virtue. All of Siegel’snbest heroes were men who acceptednresponsibility and did what...
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What a Drag
Drag Me to Hell Produced by Buckaroo Entertainment Directed by Sam Raimi Screenplay by Sam and Ivan Raimi Distributed by Universal Pictures Some reviewers have hailed Drag Me to Hell as an hilariously ghoulish comedy. I can’t think why. Oddly enough, it takes calculating discipline to make a comedy genuinely hilarious, and that is...