One consequence of the Cold War has gone unnoticed. Before the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States had already ceased to exist. To fight the Cold War and in the name of national security, Washington had destroyed the political structure created by the U.S. Constitution—the well-defined union of states, which...
10957 search results for: Post-Human Future
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Around the World With Donald Trump
My title is a bit of a stretch, as I did not travel all the way round the world, nor close to it, and the trip took 19 days, not 80. Still, it was my world, extending roughly from the American Mountain West across Western Europe, and I traveled by ship and train and motor...
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Here Comes the Parade
This past summer, a headline appeared in the Louisville Courier-Journal: “Kentucky terrorist arrests shouldn’t jeopardize refugee program, advocates say.” The first paragraph ran: “As U.S. authorities recheck intelligence gathered on refugees, resettlement agencies say the arrest of two suspected Iraqi terrorists in Kentucky should not jeopardize programs that have helped tens of thousands of persecuted...
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Muslim Sex Crimes in Northern England
In Britain there have been 17 recent prosecutions of gangs of Muslim rapists and child molesters involved in the “on-street grooming” for sex of victims as young as 11 in several towns and cities in northern England. In the most recent case, members of a gang of Muslims from Derby were convicted of rape, false...
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Geez
Angels & Demons Produced by Columbia Pictures Directed by Ron Howard Screenplay by Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp from the novel by Dan Brown Distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing For those who care, I’ve given away the ending of Angels & Demons in the review that follows. Those irrepressible schlockmeisters Ron Howard and Akiva...
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Roe at 43: Defy It
Today, many souls are braving the weather in Washington, D.C., to testify to the truth that the United States is a rich gutter country that guts millions of babies, guts women, and has disemboweled herself in an act of worship before the god of Mammon. Steaming and bleeding on the ground before her staggering and...
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A Marvelous Tragedy
Sling Blade, the recent hit film that rightly won Billy Bob Thornton an Academy Award, is now out on video. As viewers of the film know, it is a marvelous tragedy of classical simplicity. But what has not been mentioned is that it is also a tale told in the tradition of Southern literature. As...
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Aborted Economy
“Demography is destiny,” sociologists and demographers tell us. No. Morality is destiny. Demography stems from that, as does economics. Americans now are learning that lesson the hard way. Tax rates, debt, deficits, trade policy, monetary policy, government spending, and other factors all affect economic growth and prosperity. But they’re all trumped by demographics—and above that,...
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Rejecting the ‘Proposition Nation’
In January, Donald Trump’s President’s Advisory 1776 Commission released its 45-page “1776 Report,” which, according to The New York Times, is “a sweeping attack on liberal thought and activism that…defends America’s founding against charges that it was tainted by slavery and likens progressivism to fascism.” Joe Biden scrapped it the day he entered office, and...
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Sinking to an All Time Low
After September 11, no foreigner can fully understand what it is like to live in America. Every day, we have to listen to our leaders telling us why the Constitution doesn’t work any more. It is enough to make an honest conservative want to join the ACLU—almost. The ACLU will go all the way to...
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On Education Reform
I agree with much of the premise of Clay Reynolds’ piece “The Real Crisis of Higher Education” in the February issue (Vital Signs): Certainly, as he indicates, education at all levels in the United States is failing. High schools no longer prepare students for life and work but “to take standardized tests” for advanced learning....
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The Woke-Enabling Act
In the first week of September 1792 the French Revolution entered its openly terroristic phase with the massacre of some 1,600 prisoners in Paris. It was an outrage euphemistically called les Journées du Septembre (or the September Days). It was justified by the claim that the country was in danger from foreign enemies and domestic...
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Leaving Love Scenes to the Imagination
In the movie Casablanca, Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) demands her brokenhearted former love, Rick (Humphrey Bogart), hand over some letters of transit that will allow her husband Victor to escape the Nazis. When he refuses, she pulls a gun and repeats her request, but Rick tells her, “Go ahead and shoot. You’ll be doing me a favor.”...
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On the Lam From the Census Bureau
I’m hiding out—from the Census Bureau. True, they usually don’t send out U.S. marshals with guns and handcuffs. But I’m playing it safe anyway, because the Bureau has been after me since I failed to fill out its treasured questionnaire, “The American Community Survey.” I’ve been through this before. I don’t mind if the government...
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Politics Without a Right
It took only a few days after the rout of the Republicans in their battle to drive Bill Clinton from office for the leaders of the Beltway Right to decide that the war was over and the only thing left to do was announce surrender. Four days after the Senate “acquitted” the President of the...
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Sensationalizing if Youth Violence
“Children killing children.” The very phrase is chilling. But what can the law do about a six-year-old who shoots and kills his first-grade classmate? According to our Anglo-American legal heritage of common law, not much. Children under the age of seven are presumed not to be able to know the difference between right and wrong,...
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Abridging Omar
Attorney General Loretta Lynch attempted to censor the three 911 calls Omar Mateen made as he was slaughtering his 49 victims at an Orlando nightclub. All references to Islam and the Islamic State—to which he pledged allegiance as he was slaughtering his victims—were initially scrubbed. “What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this...
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Charlie Is Their Darling
On October 25, 2000, central Sydney’s traffic stood still for hours, for the first time since the Olympiad. Inside the late-Victorian Town Hall, approximately 2,000 pilgrims witnessed the Aboriginal faith’s latest canonization: the state funeral of Charles Perkins, who had died on October 18 after 29 years of daily medical dependence on the “whitefella” culture...
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Courting the Catholic Vote
The current Presidential race has witnessed an unprecedented drive, especially by the GOP, to court the Catholic vote. Democrats, who for decades snookered Catholics into believing that theirs was the party of the laborer and the immigrant, are finding their social-justice platform of little use among Catholics who find Democrat enthusiasm for infanticide and “gay...
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Arabian Limbo
Zack Shahin, an American, was arrested in Dubai in 2008 and held in isolation for months on end. Shahin still remains in jail on what appear to be spurious charges, with no trial date in sight. All this is happening in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which purport to be the forward-looking showcase of Arab...
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DNC Roundup: What Did I Just Watch?
Democratic conventions are usually filled with soaring rhetoric disguising the party’s extremism. This year’s trainwreck is what happens when a party has no idea what they are or why they’re here.
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Your Tax Dollars at Work
Rumor has it that the Brookings Institution is a well-regarded think tank staffed by highly educated experts, whose opinions are treated with great respect by the nation’s policymakers. Unfortunately, these experts do not inhabit the same spiral arm of the galaxy as the rest of us. I base this conclusion on a widely publicized report...
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Why Does the GOP Elite Hate Its Own Base?
The scorn of the GOP elite for rank-and-file Republicans is simply unsustainable for the party.
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On Transnationalism
In Bill Kauffman’s sermon “World Citizens on Main Street” (March 1997), he decries the purchase of a local Batavia, New York, tractor factory by a German firm as an example of foreign “Teutonic overlords . . . tied to Batavia only by the flimsy cord of the almighty dollar.” Using such epithets as “executioners” and...
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No Miracles This Time
Last year, when I was in Helsinki, I made a great discovery:, probably the best informed people on Soviet affairs are the Finns, whose Russian-watching goes back almost two centuries, long before the Bolshevik coup of 1917. I was in Finland talking with veteran analysts, official and unofficial, about the overpowering Soviet military presence that...
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Staying the Course
There are many critics of the flaws in the U.S. approach to the “War on Terror” and the merits of our interventionist war in Iraq. Much of the criticism predictably comes from liberals, but the most important, in challenging the status quo within a Republican administration, comes from traditional conservatives and libertarians asking why a...
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Dress Rehearsal for Impeachment
Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court was approved on an 11-10 party-line vote Friday in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yet his confirmation is not assured. Sen. Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, has demanded and gotten as the price of his vote on the floor, a weeklong delay. And the GOP Senate has agreed...
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Desperate Pretense
After two years of desperate pretense that the Bush administration is but the long afternoon of the Reagan era, many of Mr. Bush’s conservative supporters now begin to suspect that morning in America is fast lurching toward chaos and old night. The President’s apparent willingness to consider tax increases, despite his best-known campaign promise, and...
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A Wittgensteinian Reading
Increasingly I find myself in the position of the dissident in an old Soviet joke, protesting against the regime on a street corner by handing out leaflets. A passerby takes one, sees that it’s a blank sheet of paper, and asks why there are no words. “Who needs words?” counters the protester. “Isn’t it all...
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In a Tizzy
Igor Ivanov, Russia’s foreign minister, is usually calm, cool, and collected, but he looked nervous during his March 22 press conference. Ivanov, known among Kremlin siloviky (members of the defense/security apparatus) as something of a wimp, adopted an uncustomary frown and set about lambasting Washington’s recent “unfriendly acts,” especially the March 21 expulsion of six...
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A False Sense of Security
The Taliban’s defeat may give the American people a false sense of security. They may convince themselves that we can vanquish those who launch terror attacks on us with the use of our push-button arsenal and massive airpower, precision missiles, and a modest use of ground forces—Special Forces, light infantry, and Marines, or even local...
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John Wayne and World War II
Ever since I can remember, John Wayne has been the actor the left most loves to hate. While the left’s criticisms of him are many, the one that seemed to have the most validity was his failure to serve his country during World War II. “He’s a big phony,” I was told by leftist classmates...
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Using Howard Stern to Build Hillary’s Dream
As I sit down to write this, on the Sunday afternoon before the second presidential debate, the media feeding frenzy over remarks made by Donald Trump 11 years ago continues unabated. The content of those remarks reminded me of one of the more interesting pieces I’ve read about the improbable rise of Trump, an article...
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What the Editors Are Reading
Ross Douthat, who converted to Catholicism as a teenager, performed a great service to the Church when he wrote To Change the Church, his assessment of Pope Francis’s pontificate thus far. Despite his many criticisms of Francis, Douthat avoids anger and bitterness, giving the Pope the benefit of every doubt and freely acknowledging that the...
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Syria and Our Deaths of Despair
Just two days after the alleged April 9 chemical attack in Douma, Syria, TV host Tucker Carlson asked Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, “What is the American national security interest that would be served by regime change in Syria?” Wicker responded, “Well, if you care about Israel you have to be interested at least in...
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An Unhinged World
A few years after he was removed from office in 1890, Otto von Bismarck remarked that “Europe today is a powder keg, and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal.” At present, the Iron Chancellor’s dictum is applicable to the entire planet. The most important event by far this year has been Europe’s...
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‘Hunter’s Conviction Blows Up Trump’s Claim of Two-Tiered Justice System’—No, It Doesn’t!
Given the array of serious crimes allegedly committed by Biden family members, Hunter’s gun conviction represents the equivalent of nailing Al Capone over unpaid parking tickets.
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Is War Unavoidable?
Currently wars are being fought in the Balkans, in Russia, in Southeast Asia, and in various parts of Africa, but they involve relatively few people. Despite these wars, we live in reasonably peaceful times, and no threat of a major war appears on the horizon. Yet, although we don’t know when war will break out...
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What We Are Reading: October 2022
Short reviews of Days of Rage, by Bryan Burrough, and All the World's Mornings, by Pascal Quignard.
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Is a Korean Missile Crisis Ahead?
To back up Defense Secretary “Mad Dog” Mattis’ warning last month, that the U.S. “remains steadfast in its commitment” to its allies, President Donald Trump is sending B-1 and B-52 bombers to Korea. Some 300,000 South Korean and 15,000 U.S. troops have begun their annual Foal Eagle joint war exercises that run through April. “The...
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Name That Tune
First things first. In the briefly intersecting histories of rock and roll and Pentecostalism, it is recorded that Jerry Lee Lewis, at age 15, was expelled from Southwestern Bible Institute in Waxahachie, Texas, for unrepentantly playing a boogie version of “My God Is Real.” In view of the depth and breadth of the Jim Bakker-PTL...
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Letter From College
The much-ballyhooed young conservative movement of the early 1980’s may soon come to an inglorious and grinding halt. While the early 80’s were marked by a certain gusto on the part of conservatives fighting to overthrow entrenched liberals, the middle 80’s are a time of unwarranted complacency. One can almost hear cries of “Reagan is...
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Everybody in America
As I understand gun control, the idea is to disarm criminals unless they work for the government. Police used to see their duty as to protect people. Since the feds took over training them, more and more of them think their job is to swagger, push people around, and make military-style assaults. An Obama spokesperson...
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Corruption and Contempt
“Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.” —Thomas Babington For those readers who know very much about Niccolo Machiavelli, the most striking feature of Michael Ledeen’s new book, which tries to explicate a number of Machiavelli’s precepts with...
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Spirited Young Men Should Stay Out of Biden’s Military
Do not serve a regime that hates you. When it comes to the American military, it is time for the nation’s spirited young men to meme on, stand up, and drop out.
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Three New Members
NATO has three new members: Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The event has taken place at a time when Europe is as stable and unthreatened as it has ever been in history. The Russians—regardless of political persuasion—are profoundly disturbed at the shift eastwards of the limit of NATO’s Article 5 guarantee, which postulates that...
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Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
One of the great interests of Anglo-Saxon poems is the heroic code of the warriors. They fight for their own glory, of course, but also to protect and avenge their lord, to preserve their religion, and defend the liberties of their people. Unlike the Vikings, they are neither savages nor merely predators. Before going on...
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Stupid Is Not Enough
When Donald Trump defeated Ted Cruz in the 2016 Indiana presidential primary, the race for the Republican Party nomination was over. The prize was Trump’s. The next day, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced that he was not yet ready to endorse the standard-bearer. George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Jeb Bush quickly followed suit,...
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The Incredibles
In January, two astronomers announced that, following the recent demotion of Pluto as the ninth planet, they may have discovered a replacement for it in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune’s orbit. If they are right, according to their calculations the “new” planet’s orbit would take it as close as 20 billion miles to the sun...
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Sophocles’ Antigone
Sophocles’ Antigone is a drama about a young woman who defies orders because she believes them to be wrong. Her uncle Creon, the ruler of Thebes, had proclaimed that no one was to give the rites of burial to Antigone’s brother Polynices, because he besieged his own homeland. However, Greek religious custom unambiguously requires that...