If Donald Trump told Michael Cohen to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels about a one-night stand a decade ago, that, says Jerome Nadler, incoming chair of House Judiciary, would be an “impeachable offense.” This tells you what social media, cable TV and the great herd of talking heads will be consumed with for the...
The public knows what they are seeing on campuses is not freedom of expression—a sacred American right—but lawlessness and dangerous disorder.
Dear Members of Congress: Some of you who are doing your duty in representing your constituents need not pay attention to this letter. You know who you are. For the rest of you, I have a question: Where in the name of our country are you people? Since Jan. 20, we’ve had a crisis at...
Like many children growing up in the 1950’s, he looked forward to Halloween even more than to Christmas. It was, admittedly, a difficult choice, because at Halloween, all he got was candy or a disappointing piece of fruit, while Christmas was a bigger bonanza even than his birthday. Nonetheless, after the anticipations of Christmas Eve...
When Lorena Bobbitt startled her hubby one evening with a knife through his privates—vigorously severing an intimate part of their relationship—a lot of women apparently admired the, uh, statement Lorena made that night. I own the conversation radio station for Lancaster & York counties in Pennsylvania, and the other morning Lorena Bobbitt talk poured from...
The recent passing of Maya Angelou generated a predictable panoply of gushing grief from the mainstream media. “The definition of a phenomenal woman” gushed CNN; “Commanding Literary Voice” enthused The New York Times; “A Hymn to Human Endurance”, raved Time Magazine. The latter characterization is actually the most accurate, just not in the way the...
In 1912, a group of Oxford fellows began meeting to work out a minimalist common creed that would be acceptable to all Christians. William Temple, future archbishop of Canterbury, was the guiding spirit of the group, which argued its way down to an inoffensive consensus entitled Foundations. The Oxford Seven ended up setting aside miracles,...
“Humanities” is Western society’s name for the academic expression of its fundamental values. There are other branches of learning—medicine, law, engineering, and business, all of which benefit from the humanities—but only the “liberal arts” reflect a society’s soul, central beliefs, highest aspirations, and ultimately its culture. Yet during the last half-century America has witnessed the...
Writing—literary creation in the fullness of the sense that we have known it in the previous century and even in the one before, from the French and Russian masters, the daft Irish, the mad Yankees, the haunted Southerners (and from elsewhere, of course)—sometimes seems to be on the way out. Senses of language, of irony,...
Kamala Harris wants to be president, ran for the job in 2020 and probably expected Biden, at some point after defeating former President Donald Trump, to hand her the baton before November 2024.
It’s one of those stories of the century that somehow never gets treated that way. For an astounding 25 of the past 26 years, the United States has been the leading arms dealer on the planet, at some moments in near monopolistic fashion. Its major weapons-producers, including Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, regularly pour the...
“Justice has been done,” chortles President Obama and his spokespeople. ”Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, good bye,” chanted the proles on the streets of New York. There are already T-shirts on sale saying “Obama got Osama.” I am surprised not to have heard of a procession of little people in...
It was an interesting time. The Second World War had gone on two years longer than the First, with resultant fatigue in England’s industrial north, which gave the Labour government its 1945 landslide. Such is admirably explained in Corelli Barnett’s The Audit of War, which shows how the appeal of the shadow Attlee government, particularly...
If Democrats are optimistic as 2019 begins, it is understandable. Their victory on Nov. 6, adding 40 seats and taking control of the House of Representatives, was impressive. And with the party’s total vote far exceeding the GOP total, in places it became a rout. In the six New England states, Republicans no longer hold...
In his discussion of Bill Clinton’s “mini-General Assembly” (Cultural Revolutions, November 2005), Dr. Srdja Trifkovic claims that Thabo Mbeki’s assertion—that such “traditional attitudes” of African men as violence against women and promiscuity do not play a significant role in spreading the disease—is highly controversial. Actually, Mbeki’s assertion is justified. Dr. Trifkovic should read “The Chemical...
Lock up your daughters, draw the blinds, and check your house for bugs and hidden cameras. George Garrett has put on his cap and bells again, and every page of his new book constitutes a thought crime against the stupid hypocrisies on which the current American regime is built. Part mystery novel, part social satire....
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...
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...
I have a more or less professional interest in Southern regional magazines. Some I’ve written for, others I’ve written about, one or two I’ve cribbed from—one way or another a few subscriptions and the odd newsstand purchase wind up as deductions on my income tax. Whatever else these magazines may be, they’re all part of...
The elevation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court formalizes state-sponsored injustice in the very institution charged with upholding justice.
Last Tuesday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu caused a stir when he told the World Zionist Congress that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, inspired Hitler to proceed with the mass murder of European Jews during the Second World War. “Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel...
It is time we looked at the world from a new perspective, one of enlightened nationalism. Cliches about a “new” global economy aside, there has always been an international economy—ever since Columbus stumbled onto the Western Hemisphere while seeking new trade routes to the East, in the hire of a nation-state, Spain. The Dutch East...
The targeted burning of France's public schools and libraries in its latest riots shows that the rejection of French education and culture by Muslim immigrants has become overt and systematic. France is a nation shattering into ghettos.
Susan Sontag passed away in New York City on the Feast of the Holy Innocents at the age of 71. Dying of leukemia after a long struggle with cancer, Sontag leaves behind no image of suffering or weakness but rather one of strength and courage, idiosyncratic integrity and productivity, and a remarkably wide range of...
The May 6 general election in England was one of the most eagerly contested in recent history. At stake were 649 parliamentary seats (one vote has been postponed because of the death of a candidate) for which there were almost 4,150 candidates. Also up for grabs were 4,222 local council seats in 164 English local...
As far back as I can remember, I had the feeling that I had been born some time after the end of everything that mattered. Yes, there was still an abundance of material comforts and some vestiges of marriage and religion, but vanishing before our eyes—like the stars in the sky faded by street lights—were...
California is like a beautiful woman who always falls for losers. In just the past 13 years, voters put on the governor’s throne Gray Davis, who was so bad he was dumped from power in the state’s historic 2003 recall. He was replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who promised to “terminate” California’s problems, especially its endemic...
While I share some of the concerns expressed by Leon Hadar in his February View (“It’s the War, Stupid!”), his analysis of the 2006 election is short on facts, as when he says that Virginia Sen. James Webb’s victory over former Sen. George Allen could only be explained by Webb’s success in “accentuating a consistent...
It has been an awful two decades. Say what you will about Ronald Reagan, he did not leave people feeling depressed, even hopeless. Then came four years of George H.W. Bush—an honorable man, but hardly an inspiration. And his tax and regulatory policies were largely indistinguishable from those of the Democrats. Then we endured eight...
The Democratic party only has papered over its contradictions ever since 1968. Today’s campus protests have ripped off the wrapper, and they’re forcing on Biden a choice he can’t, or won’t, make.
In 1954, the Supreme Court held in Brown v. Board of Education that the state-sponsored segregation of children in public schools was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and thus unconstitutional. The Court reasoned that segregation “generates a feeling of inferiority . . . that may affect their [black children’s]...
On his deathbed in Washington, Richard Holbrooke allegedly told his Pakistani surgeon, “You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.” Perhaps the story is true. After all, Holbrooke, though one of the greatest liars in public life, must have told the truth occasionally and his words may even have been delivered accurately by the class...
Donald Trump has brought out the largest crowds in the history of primaries. He has won the most victories, the most delegates, the most votes. He is poised to sweep three of the five largest states in the nation—New York, Pennsylvania and California. If he does, and the nomination is taken from him, the Republican...
When college athletics abandons the spirit of play for the reality of pay.
A new book offers some important insights on the enduring and legitimate reasons for immigration restriction even as it proposes some less compelling ones.
Wendell Berry’s voice is rich and mellow, carrying a slight grit that comes from weathering, age, and experience. His accent is strong enough to flavor his words but mild enough to soothe his listeners. It is a surprisingly gentle voice for one so radical. I sit listening to the Kentucky gentleman. With me are a...
“History is philosophy from examples.” —Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ars Rhetorica The “disruptive decade” referred to in the title of this collection of essays is the 1960’s, when Eugene Davidson served as editor of Modern Age. Although the 60’s ended only 30 years ago, Mr. Davidson’s writing (the prefatory editorials to each...
If you really want to know what’s going on in a city, consult the motel clerk working the graveyard shift—not the clerk at the chain motel, but his counterpart at the inn that advertises the cheapest rates at the interstate exit with the truck stop. The kind of inn where you find cars patched with...
“Blacks for Gray, Whites for Fenty,” ran the nuanced headline on page one of the Washington Examiner. The story told of how black Mayor Adrian Fenty, who got rave reviews for appointing Michelle Rhee to save District of Columbia schools, was crushed six to one in black wards east of the Anacostia River, as he...
The Myth of Overpunishment is a muscular response to the activists and politicians who cry over the supposedly too-high incarceration rate of the American justice system.
The city of Leicester is about as far from the sea as one can get in England. But one sweltering August day, when everyone else was heading down to the beaches, we were driving in the opposite direction so that I could fill in a long-troubling gap on my mental map of England. I had...
An Exercise in Calculated Hysteria The semiautomatic rifle has been part of the American scene for nearly a century. In 1903 the Winchester Repeating Arms Company marketed the first commercially successful semiautomatic rifle. It was not designed as a military arm, and no sales were made to the US Army. The new rifle was marketed...
We can thank Providence that the earthquake was not 150 miles closer to Tokyo, else Japan's dead might number in the millions. Prime Minister Naoto Kan calls it the worst crisis since World War II. Yet, horrendous as it is, it does not, thus far, compare with that. For the ...
The Fox Theatre—a grand movie palace of Detroit’s 1920’s, which is now used primarily as a venue for acts that won’t fill an arena—contained a chronologically mixed crowd in mid-March. Paul Young was in concert. Young, a slightly chubby, baby-faced British singer (he appears, to borrow a line from Elvis Costello, “teddy-bear tender and tragically...
Late in life, Harry Sinclair Lewis of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, figured something out: he would soon be forgotten. In a mock self-obituary, Lewis foresaw that he would leave “no literary descendants. . . . Whether this is a basic criticism of [Lewis’s] pretensions to power and originality, or whether, like another contemporary. Miss Willa Cather,...
For some time now, American law and lawyers have had a legitimacy problem. Most Americans must wonder how it is that unelected federal judges have the power to declare that no state government can punish consensual homosexual relations, prohibit abortion, or permit prayer in the schools (to mention just a few of the striking things...
You don’t need AI to figure that Harris and the Democrats are bad for technology and innovation.
We can thank Providence that the earthquake was not 150 miles closer to Tokyo, else Japan’s dead might number in the millions. Prime Minister Naoto Kan calls it the worst crisis since World War II. Yet, horrendous as it is, it does not, thus far, compare with that. For the earthquake dead are not...
Illegal aliens will be counted in the 1990 census—that’s right, illegal aliens. As a result, one or more states with a disproportionately large number of illegal residents will gain seats in the House of Representatives at the expense of states with few illegal immigrants. According to calculations by the Congressional Research Service, the inclusion of...
Here is Part 1 of the English version of Thomas Fleming’s interview with the Serbian magazine Geopolitika, on the decline of America: Geopolitika: What has happened to the United States? Observers in and outside of America have been commenting on America’s decline, both as a world power and as an inspiration and model for other countries. Within living...