“A Manifesto for Renewing Liberalism” is the title of a recent issue (September 13, 2018) of the house journal of liberalism, The Economist. I read this confessional admission with amazement. Can the editors mean that liberalism needs to renew its vows? It is not like liberalism to be crippled by self-doubt. What went wrong? Of...
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The Trans Specter in the C-Suite
The enemies of conservatives are in America’s boardrooms, where executives form the driving force of progressive causes in the United States today and have been doing so for some time.
Commendables
A Gloaming Raymond Aron: The Committed Observer; Interviews with Jean-Louis Missika and Dominique Wolton; Regnery Gateway; Chicago. On 17 October 1983, thelight in the world of the intellect and action became dimmed with the passing of critic, scholar, thinker, teacher, journalist Raymond Aron. Aron, of course, left much behind him—40 books, enlightened students, journalism, lectures,...
Who’s Afraid of Being Homophobic?
Who’s afraid of being labeled homophobic? A great many people, that’s who, importuned incessantly by the liberal media and other keepers of the woke flame of proper public behavior. That behavior trends ever more left-wing, collectivist, and anti-Western—following Barack Obama’s “arc of the moral universe.” The Supreme Court’s recent decision to enshrine anti-discrimination protections for...
Quo Vadis, America?
“Natural law—God’s law—will always trump common law,” said Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and a Christian leader in her own right, “God will have the final word in this matter.” But, for now, Justice Anthony Kennedy has the final word. Same-sex marriage is the law of the land, as the right...
An Age of Indoor Cats
Cats, I’ve sometimes been told, make better pets than dogs, because cats are more independent, which is just another way of saying that dogs have been domesticated for so many thousands of years, they are genetically the kinds of creatures that find their fulfillment in loving and serving man, while cats are not. I love...
In Praise of Cultural Appropriation
Recently I read of a 67-year-old woman who wanted to run in a marathon. She had never run for exercise in her life, but her desire and passion led her to put on a pair of sneakers, leave the house, and walk a mile. Every day she walked through her neighborhood, extending the distance a...
The Essence of Evil
Susan Jacoby: Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge; Harper & Row; New York. Joe McGinniss: Fatal Vision; G. P. Putnam’s Sons; New York. These two very different books are linked by a common theme—coping with evil. Jacoby presents a philosophical-historical view of revenge, and a case for its utilization under certain guarded conditions. McGinniss tells...
Parliament’s Election Angst
“O’ the twelfth day of December” sang Sir Toby Belch. Boris Johnson, who much resembles the knight, completes the line: “Let’s have a general election.” He had his way on Tuesday, October 28, when Jeremy Corbyn announced Labour support for a general election on December 12, 2019. That opened the door for a simple majority,...
Homme Sérieux
Kipling should be a fascinating subject for literary history. He was enormously gifted and successful, the child of a modest, nonconformist Anglo-Scot family that, besides producing him, also produced his cousin, the conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin. One of his aunts married Edward Burne-Jones; another married Sir James Baldwin, chairman of the Great Western Railway,...
Democrats Have No Good Option for 2024
Given the alternatives, the Democrats might have to roll the 2024 dice with their stammering, scandal-ridden, palpably weak, cognitively deficient presidential incumbent.
Where All Belong
In my letter last month I tried to describe the noble seriousness of Italian life, unique in that it has given the modern world a middle class with a human face. Even on a simple physical level such as that of the naked eye or of the camera lens, one can observe this seriousness like...
Second Thoughts
These days everyone is having second thoughts—about Vietnam and the 60’s, about American history, about what it means to be a liberal and what it means to be a conservative. Rather than be left out of the rewrite, I too have been having second thoughts about what I did and did not do some 20...
No Longer Taken Seriously
Downtown Manhattan is swarming with groups of educated, creative people bound to tell you who you are. Last year, for example, when I tried to catch the thriller Basic Instinct near Union Square, a gay group refused to let anyone see the film. They shut it down, by heaving stink bombs into the theater. Some...
American Fiction Is American Reality
'American Fiction' has penetrated the thick permafrost that wokesters have imposed on our cultural landscape.
Light Reading
Is it possible, in 50 words or less, to describe today’s woman, the postfeminist 80’s woman, the woman who will soon become the 90’s woman? I’m glad you asked. The typical American woman in 1989 is divorced, in need of financial guidance, worried about her career, either agonizing about her biological clock or searching out...
A Midterm Reality Check
With the Georgia runoff results in, the midterms represent a remarkable achievement for the Democratic Party. They've held their own despite failing grades in all polls on inflation, crime, foreign policy, and immigration, and a mostly senile president.
Freudianism and Its Discontents
Freudian Fraud has an intriguing but difficult-to-prove thesis, namely that Freudian thought radically altered American society for the worse. An “audit of Freud’s American account,” says Torrey, shows more debits than credits. He believes the chief liability inherent in the Freudian system is its tendency to undermine traditional notions of responsibility. “Don’t blame me, blame...
Partisan Games
Irony has been in the news these past few days, when a couple of guys not only refused to share a Frenchman’s joke at the expense of the Prophet Mohammed, peace and blessings be upon him, but actually gunned down the joker– along with a dozen of his cronies, for good measure. For comparison I...
Moi, le Déluge
“He was just five years old when Mattie Barry, seeking a fresh start in life, moved north with her son and two older daughters to Memphis. . . . Her husband had been killed a year earlier in Itta Bena. Neither Marion Barry, Jr., nor his mother, who now lives in Memphis, will talk about...
Deformations of Justice
If a U.S. administration formally attempted to establish an authoritarian police state, its efforts would almost certainly encounter bitter and even violent resistance; recent experience, however, has shown that remarkably authoritarian and unconstitutional methods can be established without provoking serious protest, provided they are introduced piecemeal and justified by the rhetoric of good intentions. In...
Do Men Have More Teeth?
Do men have more teeth than women? The actual answer is no. Both men and women have 28-32 teeth, depending on how many wisdom teeth grow in. But, if you’re fourth-century B.C. Greek philosopher Aristotle, the answer is a resounding, “Of course!” “Males have more teeth than females in the case of men, sheep, goats, and...
Vengeance Is Mine, Saith Ms. Jeong
In Europe some time during the 17th and 18th centuries the class of people who were known after 1789 as “the left” made the shocking discovery that the world is not perfect: not even all it might be but should be and, indeed, can be. To the leftist mind, this imperfection was unnatural, and therefore...
The End of a Myth
“Economy, n. Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford.” —Ambrose Bierce “That was the summer of seventy-three,” writes Forrest McDonald. “Remember it well, and cherish the memory, for things will never be that good again.” This is from his little book...
Obama’s Manufactured Border Crisis
This summer’s border crisis—the near total collapse of any controls or security at our southern border, especially in South Texas—was manufactured by the Obama administration as a means of forcing through a mass amnesty, either via Congress or by executive fiat. Legalizing millions of illegal aliens now resident in these United States is the immediate...
Generation X
Generation X, to which I belong, is a pious generation. You can easily become alienated from it unless you adopt the correct attitudes. Without the sociopolitical skills that today masquerade as good manners, it is quite possible to talk one’s way into trouble. The last time I felt threatened by educated middle-class people was in...
Turn to the Dark Side
As members of the House of Representatives were moving toward impeachment hearings that should make Bill Clinton—whatever the outcome—one of the most infamous politicians in American history, Republicans in both houses of Congress decided to give the President everything he was asking for—more federally funded teachers to corrupt the children and $18 billion of boodle...
Welcome to the Texas GOP’s Potemkin Village of Conservatism
Republicans hold America’s reddest large urban constituency in Tarrant County, Texas. The locals consider its seat, Fort Worth, a “Mecca for conservatives.” If any place in America should be beyond the reach of progressivism, it is these 900 square miles of Lone Star land. And yet, a recent incident within the Keller Independent School District...
Night Thoughts for the Middle-Aged
About Schmidt Produced and distributed by New Line Cinema Directed by Alexander Payne Screenplay by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor from Louis Begley’s novel The Quiet American Produced by William Harberg and Stefen Ahrenberg Directed by Phillip Noyce and Robert Schenkkan Screenplay by Christopher Hampton from Graham Greene’s novel Distributed by Miramax Films Bulletin: Hollywood...
A Giant Maligned
The “Great Men” of history were mostly mad or bad, and often both. To be driven by pride, vanity, and ruthless ambition is common and unremarkable. That drive is not sufficient to leave a lasting mark on the affairs of mankind, of course, but it is necessary. It is therefore redundant to dig diligently into...
The Fall of Lord Blackadder and Lady Manolo (of Blahnik)
Mark Steyn once told me a revealing story about Conrad Black’s “conservative” Canadian national newspaper, the National Post. It seems star columnist David Frum had ventured this evaluation: “The Post has a problem. It was started to save Canada, but Canada isn’t worth saving.” Ah, the authentic voice of the Canadian neoconservative! Or, as English...
Boris Johnson Is Bulletproof
For an informed insight into British politics, avoid the mainstream media. You would rest on a waterbed of misconceptions. The final ballot for the Tory leadership candidates closed with this result: Boris, 160; Hunt, 77; Gove, 75. So the top two go into a series of nationwide hustings, with the run-off put to Conservative Party...
A Plague on All Our Houses
Ending Plague, by Francis Ruscetti, Judy Mikovits, and Kent Heckenlively, draws a connection between big pharma’s vaccine industry and a host of modern diseases.
When Lorena Bobbitt Comes Bob-Bob-Bobbing Along
Dear Howard Stern, I don’t care if your New Year’s Eve program did set the all-time world record for a pay-for-view TV event. And I don’t care, either, if your book is a best-seller and people are lining up around the block to get a signed copy of it. I just want to tell you,...
On Morality in Film
In his review of John Boorman’s The Tailor of Panama (In the Dark, June), George McCartney comments in detail and at great length on what he perceives to be the film’s merits. Some of these are real, though hardly worthy of the extravagant praise that McCartney bestows. He especially praises Pierce Brosnan for his portrayal...
Television
Events in India of nearly 40 years ago are in the news all at once. The television series, The Jewel in the Crown, has touched the public’s nerve—not necessarily the raw nerve. The reaction has been so strong that the chemistry of success deserves close scrutiny. The exploitation of India’s resources is an old story....
Sighting Sylphs and Stalking Sense
One of the primary functions of literary criticism is to impose a certain order on the subject, the text. In a very basic sense, it can be thought of as a set of instructions for the reader of the text, not unlike those packed along with a dishwasher or a swing set. However, there is...
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...
Trail Life: A Christian Answer to the Boy Scouts
When Boy Scouts of America (BSA) announced their decision to welcome and validate openly homosexual boys six years ago, Cub Scout mom Theresa Waning saw the writing on the wall. Shortly after BSA’s announcement, the church chartering her son’s troop, like many other churches across the country, revoked their BSA charter, leaving Waning’s son and...
Theresa May’s Impending Exit
The War of the Tory Succession is now entering its terminal phase. The ultra-loyalist Amber Rudd, badly wounded a couple of months ago, has now after convalescence returned to the Front. She is back in the Cabinet after Dominic Raab became the second Brexit Secretary to pull out from that unfulfilling job. Michael Gove avoided...
Doe Fever
The Case Against Hillary Clinton is a strange book. It would be less strange if it were titled Peggy Noonan’s Psychoanalyses, Future Speculations, and General Meanderings, Which Are All Well-Written and Witty. But a book billed as an indictment of the First Lady, written by none other than Ronald Reagan’s most lauded speechwriter, creates certain...
The Long Retreat in the Culture War
The Republican rout in the Battle of Indianapolis provides us with a snapshot of the correlation of forces in the culture wars. Faced with a corporate-secularist firestorm, Gov. Mike Pence said Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act would not protect Christian bakers or florists who refuse their services to same-sex weddings. And the white flag went...
Secularism and the Mosque Flap
Let's say the mosque (you know what mosque) gets built, as it certainly might, public opinion notwithstanding. What's the next theological concession America's Christian churches get to make in the name of brotherhood, sisterhood, pluralism, world peace and amity, the reconstruction of America's image, etc., etc.? First it's one thing, ...
What Bernie & The Donald Portend
Three weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, and clarity emerges. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, is in trouble. Polls show her slightly ahead of Socialist Bernie Sanders in Iowa, but narrowly behind in New Hampshire. And the weekend brought new revelations about yet more classified and secret documents sent over her private email server...
‘Woke’ Evolution
A Most Interesting Problem: What Darwin’s Descent of Man Got Right and Wrong about Human Evolution Ed. Jeremy DeSilva Princeton Universtiy Press 288 pp., $27.95 The complex debate about the place of Darwinian theory in discussions about humankind’s nature has been further complicated by an academic left that has taken up trashing Darwin—who is, after...
Maxims for American Intellectuals
(good for putting down right-wing bigots at cocktail parties or in the classroom) Taking off your shoes at the airport is patriotic and makes you safer. If college athletes fail academically it is obviously society’s fault. HIV is an unfortunate virus and not caused by human behaviour. Presidents are good and do what is best...
American Ideas, Then and Now
Ten years or so ago Stephen Fry, English polymath, writer, TV personality, stage and screen actor, and many other things, gave a Spectator-sponsored lecture at the prestigious Royal Geographical Society. His theme was appreciation for America, where he said he would choose to live “in a heartbeat.” I know Stephen and paid extra attention to...
Bring Me a Grape
What a peculiar, in some respects downright weird little world this fascinating biography introduces us to. Imagine a very clever, very plain, very spoiled little boy, born at the turn of the century into the intensely competitive upper-middle or lower-aristocratic class in Britain. Conventional success at sports, diplomacy, the professions, or business being ruled out...
The Allure of the Lurid
Reviews of Blonde, adapted from the Joyce Carol Oates biographical novel of the same title, and the 1951 film, The Enforcer.
The Politics of Morbid Fascination
Rafael Palmeiro has ED. How do I know? He told me. He told you, too. Heck, he told the whole country about 15 years ago. He went on national television (while intermittently swinging a big bat—Freudian subtlety is lost on the Madison Avenue types) to say that he was having a bit of trouble with...