According to the official narrative, on Aug. 10, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire playboy charged with sex-trafficking minors, committed suicide in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City. Only a third of Americans actually believe this narrative, according to polling. What’s captured the public’s attention is the combination of Epstein’s...
I am grateful to George McCartney for his articulate and fascinating review of Copperhead (“Reason’s Enemy,” In the Dark, September). Unlike most reviewers, he concentrates (at least this time) on the plot, theme, historicity, characters, and atmosphere, instead of the usual pointless ramblings about the previous work and personal history of the director, or technical...
In the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush promised a more humble U.S. foreign policy. Five years later, that pledge has turned out to be nothing but disingenuous rhetoric used to contrast his campaign with the activist foreign policy of the Clinton-Gore administration. Of course, the Bush administration would claim that September 11 changed everything. ...
Short reviews of Mr. Sammler's Planet, by Saul Bellow, and Dinner at Antoine's, by Francis Parkinson Keyes.
What is wrong with Howard Dean? Not much, if you listen to many Republicans and some conservatives. Republicans are salivating over the prospect of a Dean nomination because it seems to be the best way to ensure that President Bush stays where he is. Some conservatives, however, are saying that they may vote for the...
Thursday, June 1—My final American Interest was published today in Chronicles. In the aftermath of the Second Revolution, the column has outlived its purpose. Pontificating on the evils of one-worldism, empire, global hegemony, propositional nationhood, jihadist infiltration, foreign interventionism, and “nation-building” was a necessary and often frustrating task, back in the awful days of George...
A rare crack in the fortified wall of the Bush administration’s diplomatic obstinacy seemed to appear as U.S. diplomats sat down in March with their Iranian and Syrian counterparts to discuss stability in Iraq. Foreign-policy realists of both parties hailed the move as a potential breakthrough: Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) offered a characteristically self-righteous lecture, while...
There is nothing so painfully ironic as a war between countrymen. So when nurse Kate Cumming speaks bitterly in her 1864 diary of “our kind northern friends, who love us so dearly that they will have us unite with them, whether we will or no” it is hard to blame her. Cumming is one of...
A new book offers some important insights on the enduring and legitimate reasons for immigration restriction even as it proposes some less compelling ones.
To judge by the tone, content, and amount of recent media coverage of Protestant Fundamentalism in general and television evangelists in particular. Fundamentalists are a collection of interchangeable religious parts that have grouped themselves into a united cultural force which grows stronger and more indivisible by the week. But the conclusion is incorrect because the...
Americans read the increasingly panic-stricken reports of deepening catastrophe at Fukushima 1, speed to the pharmacy to buy iodine and ask, “It’s happened there; can it happen here?” Along much of California’s coastline runs the “ring of fire,” which stretches round the Pacific plate, from Australia, north past Japan, to Russia, round to Alaska,...
“The discussion is concerned with no commonplace subject but with how one ought to live.” —Plato During the month of June, Allan Bloom’s observations on the state of American education climbed their way dramatically toward the peak of the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. Why would such a book engage a mass readership? Bloom’s...
Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware partake in academia's mass handwringing over the indigenous “right-wing terror threat”—allegedly represented by the Jan. 6 riot.
One of the really cool things about democracy is that voters tend to get what they want—which, um, can also turn out to be one of the really uncool things about democracy. A thing of real terror, if you want the truth. I tiptoe past the presidential election of 2016 on my way to look...
On February 9 Sweden’s right-leaning newspaper Nya Tider (“New Times”) published an interview with Srdja Trifkovic which focused on the deepening crisis within the European Union and the ongoing migrant invasion of Europe. Here is the English translation. NT: How do you assess the problems of Europe and the impact of the migrant crisis, terrorism,...
“Shop Like You Mean It” read the ads for a nearby mall every “Holiday Season.” The obvious question is: Mean what? The ad agency probably wants us to get into the spirit of the season of wasteful expenditure and conspicuous consumption, but, if we interpreted their ungrammatical sentence not according to the intention but according...
Saturday afternoon, my sister-in-law, Carolina, called from Bogotá. She asked me how we were doing—repeatedly, the way her mother does—then she asked to speak to my wife. My wife wasn’t home, so Carolina asked me to have her call, since “we have a little problem.” Carolina sounded fine, so I didn’t understand why my wife...
The first issue of The New Yorker (February 21, 1925) showed on its cover a dandy in top hat, high collar, and morning suit gazing through his monocle at a butterfly. The drawing is reproduced yearly, and butterflies became a cover motif. Whatever tastes, affectations, or snobbery the artist, Rea Irvin, wanted to suggest, it...
Traveling to Philadelphia Tuesday, President Joe Biden laid out in apocalyptic terms the gravity of the “threat” to American democracy from Republican efforts to reform and rewrite state election laws. We are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That’s not hyperbole. Since the Civil War. The Confederates back then...
Texas Politics, by Wilbourn Benton, professor of political science at Texas A&M, is a textbook that surveys the constitution of the state of Texas, with heavy emphasis on the written, legal structure of how the state is run. Much of the book is a dry summary. When he can, the author tells the story of...
“Out of the sacred space the sacred text would grow,” says Mr. Boritt. He’s right; those of us who grew up as Yankees know in our bones that our country is sacred ground. I took my wife to Gettysburg on our honeymoon. My uncle Joe (a federal judge appointed by Eisenhower) made a pilgrimage there...
Reasons for voting Democrat: More freebies, welfare, government jobs, grants; satisfaction of leftist ideological malice; if you are a minority, the pleasure of sticking it to Whitey. Reasons for voting Republican: Unless you are a big capitalist, a defense contractor, an employer of illegal immigrants, or a politician hoping for the perks of office,...
A small people with a distinctive religion, the Jews throughout history have tried to avoid imitating the Gentiles (that is, everybody else), lest assimilation destroy the faith and the group that embodies it. In fact, Scripture’s passionate denunciation of idolatry led the ancient rabbis, “our sages of blessed memory,” to condemn certain practices under the...
Everyone wants to save the American family. Not a day goes by, it seems, without some politician or professor issuing a call to arms or an invitation to a congressional hearing. For a long time the family had been a conservative/ Republican issue, but last fall both Mr. Mondale and Ms. Ferraro made a great...
For Héctor, Las Vegas was the American city. The Strip at night suggested, Héctor thought, an explosion in a fireworks factory—all the flashing, soaring, running, bursting lights in every color of the universe; the gaudy hotels, like upended cruise ships; the fancy stores, luxurious casinos, and romantic cocktail lounges; his compatriots crowding everywhere and jabbering...
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s order to attack South Ossetia’s capital, Tskhinvali, was a breathtakingly audacious challenge to Russia, to which she was bound to respond forcefully. That response was promptly exploited by the American mainstream media machine and the foreign-policy community in Washington to paint Russia as a rogue power that is not only dangerous...
A prudent power will always seek to keep open as many options as possible in its foreign-policy making. An increasingly rigid system of alliances, coupled with mobilization blueprints and railway timetables, reduced the European powers’ scope for maneuver in the summer of 1914 and contributed to the ensuing catastrophe. The United States, by contrast, entered...
In these troubled times of pandemics, racial conflict, and economic instability, disagreements over American conservatism may not sound particularly important. Yet, when “cancel culture” tactics are being applied to the right, the meaning of conservatism is no longer just an academic talking point. This hostile climate has rekindled robust debate on what exactly conservatism means....
Harris has no excuses, no substance, and nothing recommending her other than convenience and enthusiasm for her race and gender among people who insisted until only a short time ago that Biden was perfectly fine. He wasn’t, and neither is she.
“Race in America is always an inflammatory, volatile thing,” chirped NPR sports commentator Tom Goldman on this morning’s “Morning Edition. Goldman was sounding off to David Greene on the woes of Donald Sterling, owner of the LA Clippers, who expressed himself too candidly on matters of race in a private phone call. The word “always”...
I begin with a flourish of disclosure, which gives me great pleasure as a gesture of wistful recollection. Professor Baldwin was my roommate at university, occupying the bunk above mine. The wall space over that prisonlike fixture of canvas ticking and rude ironmongery was decorated with an enormous portrait of Karl Marx that would not...
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...
If the left believed that draping the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, around the neck of former President Donald Trump and the party that refused to repudiate him would sink the GOP, it appears to have miscalculated. For, as the left painted the Capitol riot as an “armed insurrection,” “domestic terrorism,” “attempted coup,” and...
Hank Williams died on New Year’s Day, 1953. He was not yet 30 when he passed away in the back of a Cadillac. The circumstances of his life and death created the legendary aura that surrounds Williams and virtually guaranteed that he would be the subject of many songs as well as a writer and...
The Vice President was in Russia in September, trying to persuade Boris Yeltsin to amend legislation giving the Russian Orthodox Church a privileged position. Al Gore was just the man to explain religious toleration to the Russians. In the 1996 campaign, he revealed himself as an affirmative action fundraiser, willing to solicit donations from anyone,...
The U.S. automotive industry operates in a highly regulated environment, a fact largely overlooked in recent congressional hearings over federal loan guarantees to domestic firms. These regulations affect more than three million American blue- and white-collar workers employed in the industry, along with shareholders and other investors, including retirees (and ...
I spent March 1985 in South Africa as a guest of several South African universities. I lectured to academic audiences, traveled in the rural areas of Transvaal and the Cape Province, spent a day in Soweto, visited the Crossroads slum in Cape Town and the Black township of Alexandra in Johannesburg. I talked to Black ser vants and Black leaders,...
Having been invited to address the topic of manners, I can only do so with a certain embarrassment, for I have been known to have behaved deplorably. Indeed, I was once even called “reprehensible” by a woman of repellent aspect, remotely connected with education, but, all things considered, I felt more honored than not. I...
According to the 1940 census, Framalopa County had a population of slightly over 8,000. About half of these lived in town, and the other half lived in the country: truck farmers and cattlemen who came to town on Saturdays to buy the few necessities they couldn’t raise themselves. At that time, Florida was the second-largest...
Mussolini may be a deeply flawed national hero, but he also stands for something necessary in this age: resistance to a socially and culturally destructive left.
While we await the FBI’s seventh investigation into Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s background, some considerations: All four of Christine Blasey Ford’s witnesses to a party where he allegedly attacked her deny the party ever happened. The first narrative having run its course, the Democratic War Room spun out another dubious claim of sexual assault. The second...
Writing in the New York Times on September 26, Paul Krugman insisted that the war against Afghanistan would not be “a war on behalf of the oil companies; not even a war on behalf of SUVs and McMansions.” It was, though, going to be a war “over a natural resource that is more vital than...
While researching a book on antifascism, it became clear to me that the contemporary left has strange ideas about what earlier leftists believed. This is especially true in the ascription of a certain timelessness to intersectional politics, which today’s antifascists are all about. In How Fascism Works by Yale Philosophy Professor Jason Stanley, and in...
To walk along a narrow ridge or cliff path, German-speakers will tell you, you have to be schwindelfrei. The French word vertige exists in English (vertigo), but we would be more likely to say “dizziness.” The German word is for vertige or dizziness der Schwindel, but Schwindel also can mean what it does in English—swindle....
Fourth Generation War theory provides a useful tool to understand the migrant invasion of Europe. 4GW basically is non-state warfare. The people invading Europe are not doing so inside T-34 tanks or Stukas. They’re walking. No government is leading their march, although some governments, such as that of Turkey, are encouraging it. An classic 4GW...
Modern Americans are going to live forever. We must believe that; otherwise we would not rise up in spontaneous outrage whenever a stuck accelerator causes a car to crash or a surgical procedure goes awry. Science and technology have made our world not only foolproof but death-proof, or at least they would have, were it...
Reading the newspapers, I wonder which straw will break the camel’s back when it comes to illegal immigration. What will finally cause Americans to rise up and take back their country? The tenth family killed by an illegal-alien drunk driver? The 100th housewife butchered by an illegal-alien murderer? Or the next lawsuit that awards damages...
Now that communism is dead, a new specter is haunting much of Europe—the specter of nationalism. In several countries, for the first time since World War II, what may be conveniently termed nationalist, right-wing, populist parties are on the verge of coming to power, or at least of gaining respectable numbers of seats in government....
One of the most moving war memorials I know is on a wall outside the reading room of the British Museum. It is a simple plaque with the names of a hundred or so librarians killed in the Great War. Librarians. Think about it. That plaque makes a point, doesn’t it, if not perhaps the...
Hillary Clinton would love Amherst, Massachusetts, a town aptly nicknamed “The People’s Republic of Amherst.” A stroll down Main Street quickly reveals that Birkenstocks and Volvos dominate the landscape. Amherst’s legislative body, the Town Meeting, often votes on the kind of citizen petitions that call on the community (population 35,000) to join the AFLCIO’s “union...