A candidate’s character matters, of course, but what matters most at this moment in history is which candidate proposes policies that will build a better America.
10959 search results for: Post-Human Future
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Toy Story
As federal cannon boom from the smoky ridge to the west, a rebel foot soldier darts through underbrush, scrambles over a fence and crouches warily behind a tree. Raising his rifle to fire, he takes a volley of grape-shot in the chest. Tumbling, tragically, from the coffee table, he lands on the floor among the...
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The Man Who Made Cultural Marxism
Herbert Marcuse saw the transformation of the culture as the sine qua non of revolutionary change. He understood that the working classes of Europe and America wanted better wages, not the radical destruction of the western way of life.
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What the Editors Are Reading
I discovered the novels of Henry Rider Haggard as a boy living in London, where I came across them in a public library. His name was unknown to me, and I can no longer remember why I first pulled one of his books from the shelf and took it home. I must have devoured five...
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Insulting Our Intelligence
What a good thing, from the Democratic perspective, so many of America's schools are in such miserable shape. It means, apparently, Democrats think they can insult voters' intelligence right and left and get away with it, at least until Election Day. After which, they'll think of some other way to ...
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Prayer by Numbers
When sociologists look at religion, what do they see? Inevitably, they see statistical clusters of churchgoers sorted through ecclesiastical, geographic, and demographic grids. People who want to assess contemporary social trends in American religion would do well to consult this new volume by Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge. In impressive detail. Stark and Bainbridge...
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Between Tyranny and Chaos
Why does serious 20th-century music attract so few listeners? This unpopularity is not due to a lack of interest in serious music itself, since classical music is a formidable industry that regularly draws vast numbers of listeners worldwide. These people flock to listen to the works of an earlier era, however—music of the 17th, 18th,...
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Founders, Keepers
Professor of history at Brown University, author of The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, The American Revolution: A History, and The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, Gordon S. Wood is in a unique position to undertake an account of those Founding Fathers from whom we must feel increasingly estranged. ...
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Two Cheers for Howard
“It ain’t over till it’s over,” said Yogi Berra at his most Chestertonian. Charles de Gaulle, in more meditative style, observed: “Les fins des régimes sont toujours tristes.” Both maxims are relevant in the context of Australia’s general election on November 24, 2007, which saw John Howard—prime minister since 1996—crushed by an untried but personally...
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Putin Reset
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will return to the Kremlin as president in 2012, ending speculation on the fate of the “national leader” and of the “tandem” he had formed with current President Dmitri Medvedev. Medvedev nominated Putin on September 24 during the congress of the ruling United Russia party, dashing the hopes of reformers...
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Boxing at the Garden
Imagine this scenario: at the end of a boxing match between two fighters— one white, the other, a visiting African black—the black boxer, clearly winning the fight, is disqualified on dubious technical grounds. Instead of protesting he walks peacefully over to a neutral corner, where he is suddenly set upon by the white corner crew,...
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Netanyahu’s Welcome Clarity
In his speech to Congress on March 3 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented a straightforward, simple, and extreme position on Iran’s nuclear program: there is to be none, or else there should be war. He does not want that program kept limited to civilian purposes, or internationally supervised; he wants it eliminated totally, permanently,...
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Missed Manners and Creeping Laws
All societies regulate personal behavior: That is part of what makes them societies, instead of mere aggregations of isolated individuals. Societies differ enormously, though, in just how they perform this regulation, how much they rely on law and the state, rather than informal or private means. If I walk into a crowded room wearing a...
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A Suppressed Embarrassment
A book that has failed to go anywhere internationally, contrary to the author’s expectation, is a recent study by a Chilean Jewish academic who teaches philosophy at the University of Berlin, Victor Farías. His work deals with the youthful thought and career of Salvador Allende, who, between 1970 and 1973, headed the Marxist Government of...
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The Decline and Fall of the American Economy: Offshoring Our Security
The United States has three large economic problems. The overarching one is that the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency is wearing out from continuous and large trade deficits and from government budget ...
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But Why the “Red Flag” of Revolution?
I have never been a flag-waver, nor felt much sympathy for howling mobs, particularly when bent on destruction. But since this year, 1989, marks the bicentennial of the world’s first and most influential revolution (there is hardly a revolutionary notion or motif that cannot be traced back to Danton, Robespierre, Marat, Babeuf, and their spiritual...
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The Missionary’s Son
Henry Luce both created and dominated a new form of national journalism between 1930 and 1960. Founder and editor-in-chief of Time, Life, and Fortune, he is best remembered for his 1941 Life essay “The American Century,” a robust call for the United States to assume world power status. Robert Herzstein, Carolina Research Professor of History...
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Home Movies
In a recent letter I mentioned the circuitous route my wife and I drove last summer on our way from California back home to North Carolina. The first day it took us past Bakersfield, where I’m told the children and grandchildren of Okies have imposed something resembling Southern culture on a part of California. (I’m...
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Banana Republicans
Shortly after the election of 1988 one grand old man of the Republican Party told me he thought Mr. Bush could do a creditable job so long as his administration faced no major crises. The very minor crisis of the abortive coup in Panama was the first serious test of this thesis, and it would...
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Canned Heat
Ernest van den Haag: Smashing Liberal Icons: A Collection of Debates; The Heritage Foundation; Washington, DC. When the adversaries are aggressive and the topics provocative, debates are stimulating entertainment. And, too, many vigorous minds have shared Samuel Johnson’s relish for “talking for victory.” But for participant and auditor alike, the excitement is in being there—in the tones...
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Pigs Is Pigs
Politics is like the weather: No matter how blue in the face we talk ourselves, no matter how many virgins we sacrifice to Odin, our leaders do not improve, and the drought continues. The fates who determine the destinies of nations are no more obedient to our words than the little gods of wind and...
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In Defence of Poesie
My title, borrowed from Sir Philip Sidney, is deliberately misleading; that is, it does not mean here what he intended when he used it for his posthumous work (1595), known in another edition as The Apologie for Poetrie. In the past, poetry needed no defense—if that means pleas to a hostile or indifferent audience. Sidney,...
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Is Afghanistan a Failed Mission?
As in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973, the year our prisoners of war came home, America did not lose a major battle in Afghanistan. Yet we did not win the war. South Vietnam was lost. And contrary to the message awaiting President George W. Bush when he landed on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which...
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Now That the Dust Has Settled
American poetry has for the past few decades been going through what can only be called an adolescence, discarding rules and conventions simply because they existed. Poetry and all the arts go through a healthy siege of anarchy every so often, but this was more like terrorism than a revolution; these revolutionaries, unlike the Romantics,...
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Japan’s Prelude to Pearl Harbor
Was Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor out of character for the chrysanthemum nation? Her actions at Port Arthur, nearly 38 years earlier, suggest otherwise. In 1898 Russia began leasing the Liaotung Peninsula, which juts into the Yellow Sea between China and the Korean Peninsula, from the Chinese. On the southern tip of the Liaotung...
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In Trouble Again
Jean-Marie Le Pen is in trouble again. Imagine if Pat Buchanan had just scored a major political success, which had put him within reach of real political power—and then, just as he was reaching out to taste the fruits of years of hard work, political opponents threw a minor legal charge at him. Conviction on...
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A Party Without Guests
At the last American Political Scientists Association (APSA) convention in Chicago (September 3-6, 1987), I was immediately struck, and happily so, by the unusual attention given to historical matters. This certainly was a reflection of the convention’s theme that was a response to last year’s bicentennial celebration of the national Constitution. Nevertheless, there were two...
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“If I May Interrupt”: Live From the Senate Floor
As any connoisseur of the manifest absurdities that daily emanate from Inside the Beltway is well aware, what we read in the venerable Congressional Record is not necessarily a verbatim account of what was stated, on any given day, by our lawmakers on the floors of the House or Senate. It is common practice to...
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Disinherit the Wind
As a displaced Southerner sojourning in Kansas, I’ll never forget the time I wandered into the statehouse and encountered John Steuart Curry’s mural. One section features John Brown, girded with sword and pistol, mouth and eyes agape. Mosaic beard jutting off at a right angle, brandishing a rifle in one hand and the Good Book...
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Iran: No Escalation, No War
In his latest interview for Serbia’s top-rated Happy TV channel, Dr. Trifkovic dwells on the geostrategic and political dynamics behind the current crisis in the Middle East. The first question was whether we are at the threshold of a major war. [Interview transcript below, translated from Serbian and abbreviated.] ST: The odds of...
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Of Places and Ideas
Bravo to Jason Michael Morgan for his essay “The Pernicious Myth of Two Americas” (View, October). I am one of those people who live in America, the place, not America, the idea. Specifically, Middle America—the Heartland, some would say. I am not a Facebooker, so I was unaware, until I read Mr. Morgan’s article, of...
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An Invisible Border
The first question that comes to mind regarding the Minutemen movement is: “What do these people imagine they’re actually doing, sitting camped out down there on lawn chairs on the Southwest border?” The second is: “What do they mean to accomplish by doing it?” I imagine a representative Minuteman’s answer to the first question would...
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War Drums Along the Potomac
By releasing the grisly videos of the beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, ISIS has altered the political landscape here and across the Middle East. America is on fire. “This is beyond anything that we’ve seen,” said Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, “ISIL is as sophisticated and well-funded as any group that...
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The Way We Are, No. 9
Have we no shame? (No.) —Fred Reed Stimulus: $250 each for Social Security recipients; $250,000,000(?) each for bankers and stock speculators. Sounds like business as usual. With affirmative action and bailouts, the U.S. government has almost succeeded in severing the link between performance and reward. Honest Abe. Fair and Balanced. Compassionate Conservatism. Notice a pattern...
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April 15: Tax slavery day
Another year, another April 15 when the government gouges us to the bone. The excuse often given is Oliver Wendell Jr.’s “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.” Except history shows taxes and inversely proportional to civilization. Back before 1913, when the dreaded income tax first was imposed (except for during the...
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Slinging It
In the Valley of Elah Produced by Blackfriars Bridge Films and Summit Entertainment Written and directed by Paul Haggis Distributed by Warner Independent Pictures Michael Clayton Produced by Castle Rock Entertainment and Section 8 Written and directed by Tony Gilroy Distributed by Warner Brothers There are two kinds of symbolism: the gilded and the golden. ...
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Princess Kate and Democracy’s Discontents
The tabloid interest in the princess’s health, is also punctuated by genuine sympathy on the part of many Brits, who see the royal family as the nation's family, too. But that's not how it should be with our elected leaders.
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What the Editors Are Reading
Having written the book on Bill Bryson (literally—for Marshall Cavendish’s Today’s Writers & Their Works series, 2010), I have been looking forward to the film version of A Walk in the Woods (1998) since I first read Bryson’s semifictionalized account of hiking the Appalachian Trail. Robert Redford, who produced the movie and stars as a...
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What the Editors Are Reading
When I was in my teens I read a good deal in the realist school of American fiction: Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, Frank Norris, and so on. As a more mature reader, I found their work hopelessly dreary, dull, and dead. Much later I discovered the French realist novelists of the second half of the...
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The Real Meaning of Kim Davis
Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who was jailed for refusing to give out marriage licenses to gay couples, is out of the clink at last. But in political and cultural regards, her nation and ours is not in the clear. Moral consensus has broken down, resulting in the empowerment of the strongest, the best connected,...
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The Firearm as a Symbol of Freedom
I am overwhelmed by the sight of the small monument shaped like a gravestone—inscribed Obetem Komunismu (“Sacrificed to Communism”)—surrounded by flowers and pictures of martyrs from the 1948-1989 period in Czechoslovakia’s history. Looking up, one sees the statue of St. Wenceslas and the Czech National Museum at the end of the wide boulevard forever seared...
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By the Time Abortion Makes the Ballot, the Battle’s Over
Pro-life voters are made in pews and pulpits, not political party conventions.
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Virginia Governor Northam, Racism, and the Gadarene Swine of 2019
You would have thought Virginia Democrat Governor Ralph Northam had been a co-conspirator in the assassination of Martin Luther King, given the reaction to what appeared to be a page in his 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook. Both the Democrats on the Left and the “virtue-signaling” Republicans and movement conservatives—that is, the near entirety...
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Change is in the Air
Gov. Rick Perry was a star at the Texas “tea parties,” denouncing Washington and mentioning the s-word—secession—in front of enthusiastic crowds. Perry had already made headlines by calling for Texas to reject Washington’s “stimulus” funds and by backing a resolution in the Texas House of Representatives affirming the state’s sovereignty, before he fired up the...
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Trump—Once and Future King?
“I don’t know if he’ll run in 2024 or not. But if he does, I’m pretty sure he will win the nomination.” So says Mitt Romney, the sole Republican senator to have voted twice to convict President Donald J. Trump of impeachable acts. But is it possible Trump could win the nomination in 2024? What...
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The Swiss Dream
Swiss people are sovereign in a way the people of France, Britain, Germany and the United States are not.
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A Classic Reconsidered
Do not look for last year’s best novel piled high in a fancy stack at the Books-A-Million or B. Dalton, with the belles lettres of Tom Clancy or John Grisham, because the best novel of 2002 was written 48 years ago. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, by Sloan Wilson (recently deceased), hit the...
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Rudypalooza
Over at NRO, the chorus of praise for Rudy Giuliani grows louder. David Frum has announced that he has become a senior advisor to Giuliani, whom he praised for his “character.” William Simon and Deroy Murdock wrote separate pieces to explain why social conservatives should support Giuliani. And, on Wednesday, Kathryn Jean Lopez made clear...
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Mad Scots and Indians
It would be easy to view the recent spate of movies and documentaries that side with Amerindians against the white man as no more than a long-delayed surge of racial revenge, and of course that emotion is openly expressed in all of them. I refer to the cycle, begun by Dances with Wolves, that includes...