Suppose you are tired of hearing about roulette. Suppose the very thought of gambling, despite the metaphorist’s efforts to depict it as the great commonwealth of epochal disillusionment and hence universalize the experience, strikes you as tedious. Suppose you are the sort of man who insists that the only thing duller than watching people take...
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The GOP’s Secret Weapon
If the war with Iraq was largely the work of the Likudnik faction that has commandeered the Bush administration’s Middle East policies, the liberation of Liberia on which the President suddenly embarked the nation last summer seems to have originated at least in part with yet another lobby of questionable loyalties. On July 7, as...
Is Biden Really the Lincoln of Our Time?
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...
Unforgetting Franco
The history of Spain's peaceful transition to democracy from Franco's dictatorship is being rewritten by a left bent on vengeance and political control.
The Ideological Temptation of the Media
There have been, in recent decades, two focal points around which radical, utopian ideologies could concentrate. As a result, these two focuses-labor unions and youth-were surrounded by a veritable cult, and they acquired power, both political and cultural, even though the second of the two focuses was not, as such, organized, let alone structured. Power...
Back in the Cowboy State
On November 8 last year, Donald Trump prevented a resurrection of the Clinton administration 16 years after it left office. That same day, in an election paid scant attention by the national media, the spirit of George W. Bush’s administration was given new life in Wyoming, where Liz Cheney, a daughter of former Vice President...
DFL, R.I.P.
Tuesday, November 5, 2002, will be remembered as the day that the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party died. On Election Day, the Republicans swept most of the state’s constitutional offices and elected Norm Coleman to the U.S. Senate, Tim Pawlenty to the governorship, and John Klein to the U.S. Congress. The GOP also gained seats in the...
McGreevey’s Resignation
Jim McGreevey, who will be resigning as New Jersey’s governor on November 15, cares deeply for the people of the Garden State. (No, not the way you’re thinking!) Despite the admission on August 12 that he engaged in an extramarital relationship with a homosexual Israeli with possible ties to the Mossad—whom, early in his administration,...
Will the Oligarchs Kill Trump?
Narrow victories in the Kentucky caucuses and the Louisiana primary, the largest states decided on Saturday, have moved Donald Trump one step nearer to the nomination. Primaries in Michigan, Mississippi and Idaho on March 8, and in Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina on March 15, may prove decisive. If Marco Rubio does not...
American Revanchism
It is well past time for Americans on the right to stop calling their movement conservative. Before we can have anything to conserve, we must first take it back.
Erosion of Democracy
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the famous decision of the Warren Court which held that racial segregation in the state public schools violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of the “equal protection” of the laws, turns 50 on May 17, 2004. The inevitable celebrations of the decision in the nation’s law reviews and popular media...
Jordan Peterson and the Unknown God
“All the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.” —Acts 17:21 To some, Jordan Peterson is a breath of fresh air. To others, a guru. Many find him and his ideas to be dangerous. Still others see him as a...
Public Opinion at the End of an Age
One symptom of decline and confusion at the end of an age is the prevalent misuse of terms, of designations that have been losing their meanings and are thus no longer real. One such term is public opinion. Used still by political thinkers, newspapers, articles, institutes, research centers, college and university courses and their professors,...
The Whiskey Boys and Their Fight
My grandfather spent most of his days underground, as a cutter in his cousin’s coal mine in Imperial, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh. At night, he would arrive home looking like he had been through an explosion. Outside the kitchen door, my grandmother kept a large metal tub full of water to soak the coal dust off...
Music, Technology, and Psychological Warfare
“No change can be made in styles of music without affecting the most important conventions of society. So Damon declares and I agree.” —Plato, Republic The late Sam Shapiro used to tell a story about two Englishmen in China who wanted to demonstrate the superiority of their culture to one of the mandarins they had...
Color Me Kweisi
For a quick fix on how a particular organization sees itself and its purposes, inspect its official name, especially if the organization dates from a more forthright and transparent time, when assorted reformers wore their hearts on their letterheads. The purpose, the raison d’être, of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded...
The Pipe Dream Presidential Candidacy of Gavin Newsom or Michelle Obama
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.
Il Whig in Italia
Some years ago I was interviewed by a reporter for Corriere della Sera, Italy’s most prestigious newspaper. He had heard that I was a follower of Umberto Bossi, leader of the secessionist Lega Nord, and he wanted to know what plans I had for breaking up the United States. After disclaiming any secessionist political agenda,...
Who’s In Charge Here?
America, in case you haven’t noticed, is lost in the throes of celebrating the writing of its Constitution, which is now two centuries old. The somewhat labored efforts to fix public attention on the historic document are largely the work of former Chief Justice Warren Burger and his own private bureaucracy in the Commission on...
The Immaculate Protection From the Shot That Reelected Trump
In 1775, there was the shot heard 'round the world. In 2024, there was the shot that got Donald John Trump reelected.
Turkey: The AKP Regime Is Not in Trouble, But Erdogan Is
Hundreds of Turkish police officers backed by armored cars moved in on Istanbul’s Taksim Square early Tuesday morning and reclaimed the site after pulling out on June 1. By midday bulldozers had removed barricades of paving stones and corrugated iron. The crackdown surprised protesters, hundreds of whom had been sleeping in a makeshift camp...
It Can’t Be Repeated Too Often (Until It Sinks In), Again
It Can’t Be Repeated Too Often (Until It Sinks In), Again by Clyde N. Wilson • March 12, 2009 • Printer-friendly “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” —Orwell (Things that are known but which Americans do not acknowledge or discuss.) Ruby Ridge. Your President George H.W. Bush sent...
Those Enigmatic Steppes
As one sign of Chekhov’s greatness, his very name is invoked (in adjective form) to assess the work of others. But even while Chekhovian has been called into service on numerous occasions—in recent years, for example, to epitomize such disparate playwrights as Lanford Wilson and Beth Henley, or a bit earlier to position Lillian Hellman...
How to Keep From Getting Deported
In September, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that an illegal alien, although properly found to be a danger to the community, should not be removed from the United States because he considers himself to be a transgender woman. Finding that Mexico is not in the progressive vanguard in embracing transgender identity, the court...
The Neo-Ottoman Empire
Contrary to Washington’s official rhetoric, the U.S. government is an ally, not an opponent, of Islamic extremism—a foe, not a defender, of Western civilization. Not since the Turkish siege of Vienna (1526) has Europe faced the threat of a Muslim occupation of significant portions of the continent; it does so now because of the foreign...
Reaping the Red’s Harvest
Diane Johnson: Dashiell Hammett: A Life; Random House; New York. Spade sat down in the armchair beside the table and without any preliminary, without an introductory remark of any sort, began to tell the girl about a thing that had happened some years before in the Northwest. He talked in a steady matter-of-fact voice that...
Executive Poppycock
Terry Eastland, formerly of the Reagan Justice Department, has written a learned book explaining that, according to the Constitution, embarrassing crimes in an administration can only be investigated by prosecutors on a leash held by the President whom those crimes embarrass. Eastland’s target is Title VI of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, which...
Old & Old as New
Preservation Hall Jazz Band of New Orleans, LA; Volume II. Preservation Hall Jazz Band of New Orleans, LA; Volume III Linda Ronstadt and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra; What’s New; Electra/Asylum Records. On the back cover of Volume Ill, the entire Preservation Hall crew is grouped around a table on which is mounted a feast of...
The Lesson of the Roaring Parrot
There is an old cliche that no man is a hero to his valet. Some have been tempted to reply that it depends on the man, but I think it depends, rather, on the valet. To an observant eye, the world is peopled by ordinary men making strenuous, even heroic efforts to get through the...
Flags as Symbols
At the end of the 60’s, the Establishment began a deliberate campaign to destroy a number of American symbols it considered inimical to black welfare. That these symbols—such as the various flags of the Confederate States of America and the song “Dixie”—are revered by a large section of our country for reasons not connected with...
Monumental Stupidity
There is a scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 classic North by Northwest in which the characters look out at a brooding Mount Rushmore from the dining-room terrace of the Sheraton-Johnson Hotel in Rapid City, South Dakota (since renamed the Hotel Alex Johnson). There are Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, and Theodore Roosevelt peering back, and shortly after...
Arbitrary Power
Is it still possible to believe that the rule of law prevails in the United States of America? That concept—that we are governed by our laws and Constitution, and not the arbitrary power of dominant individuals or groups—is endangered as never before, especially after the 2020 presidential election, the loss of two Republican Senate seats...
Tribal Politics
Was race a factor in the decision of Colin Powell to repudiate his party’s nominee and friend of 25 years, Sen. John McCain, two weeks before Election Day, and to endorse Barack Obama? Gen. Powell does not deny it, contending only that race was not the only or decisive factor. “If I had only that...
The Political Lynching of Derek Chauvin
Chauvin was accused of a modern-day lynching, but mob justice is what Chauvin received as evidence was withheld, expert medical testimony ignored, and even his safety in prison neglected.
Genetic Roulette
Once, a long time ago, when, as a result of one of those complex misunderstandings that cast long shadows over the course of my life, I was getting married in a small town in Connecticut, my father showed up at the church stuffed with promotional literature. This consisted of leaflets describing his new organization, donation...
Holding the Pass
It has been ten years since the death, at his home in the village of Mecosta, Michigan, of Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind and one of the main spokesmen for organized American conservatism as it was known throughout his life. While there were other architects of conservatism who were Kirk’s contemporaries, almost all...
Americans Souring on Biden—and Washington
The California recall election turned out well for the Democrats. With Gov. Gavin Newsom sinking in the summer polls, the party had been staring starkly at the prospect of losing the nation’s largest state and seeing its governor replaced by talk-show host Larry Elder, who had vaulted into the lead among the 46 candidates seeking...
On Elian
Thomas Fleming is wrong when he writes (Cultural Revolutions, April) that, by Cuban law, Elian Gonzalez belongs to his next-of-kin, his father. According to Cuban law (specifically the Codigo de Familia Ley, No. 1289), parental authority is subordinated to “inculcating” the “internationalist spirit and socialist morality.” According to Article 95, section three, of this so-called...
The Rule of Law No Longer Reigns in New York
There was a time when the Big Apple was undoubtedly the legal capital of the country and an exciting and wonderful place to visit. That is no more.
War, Peace, and the Church’s Teaching
The amazing thing about the nuclear debate and the Catholic bishops’ participation in it is that the accumulated wisdom and experience of mankind, as well as the Church’s pronouncements on peace and war, are so completely ignored. This is quite a natural phenomenon on the part of so many lay debaters: it belongs also to...
What the Editors Are Reading
Taking up one of Graham Greene’s many novels has for me always been a hit-or-miss affair. Over the Christmas holidays I read The Honorary Consul, a copy of which I’ve owned for years. The Third World setting, this time Argentina, will be familiar to Greene’s admirers, and so will the author’s abiding preoccupation with religious...
Sovreigntist Movement
Quebec’s sovreigntist movement could learn a thing or two from Liberal Party leader Jean Charest. His return to the premiership of the pro-vince should be a lesson to the sovereigntists that it is always darkest before dawn. The sovereigntists’ night, however, will last a while longer, as the provincial Liberals have smashed them to pieces...
Innocent Leftists
A recent film festival sponsored by Human Rights Watch at New York’s Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center attracted the hard-core sandalistas of the Upper West Side, who filed in to watch—what else?—the Sandinistas and Contras in a cartoon of a Canadian documentary called The World Stopped Watching. The accompanying flyer asked, “What happens to...
Suicide of the GOP—or Rebirth?
“If his poll numbers hold, Trump will be there six months from now when the Sweet 16 is cut to the Final Four, and he will likely be in the finals.” My prediction, in July of 2015, looks pretty good right now. Herewith, a second prediction. Republican wailing over his prospective nomination aside, Donald Trump...
Never Mind the Cat-Eating; the Damage to Small Town America is Very Real
The media mind game, whereby they ‘debunk’ a minor part of a story so they can get you to swallow the rest of their narrative, is doing real harm to Americans.
America’s Race Paradigm
The Economist brands racism as “America’s constant curse,” and the question of race unnerves almost everybody, as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 airily outlaws discrimination in government, commerce, and schooling on grounds of race, gender, age, religion, or national origin, and the new, openly politicized White House policy on affirmative action (“mend it, don’t...
End American Gerontocracy
Joe Biden's latest fall demonstrates again that he is a massive liability as president. It also shows how America is suffering from gerontocratic rule, with aging Baby Boomers in their 70s and 80s dominating leadership positions.
Journalists and Other Turncoats
America’s journalists enjoyed their finest hour during Vietnam—indulging in reporting that overwhelmed all objective presentation of American military action. A recent book about Robert Garwood by two former reporters for the Washington Star suggests that our newspapermen are not done yet. Marine Private First Class Robert Garwood, captured by the Vietcong in 1963 and released...
The Russo-German Symbiosis in the First and Second World Wars
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the retreat of Leninist forces within the empire, hosannas have rung out in the Western world. “The Cold War is over, the Cold War is over,” the leaders of the West have exclaimed, and demands to turn swords into knitting needles have filled the air. At every...
Squeaking Through
George W. Bush, as President of die United States, can be counted on in the first six months to . . . well, I should be honest here (with hand on heart). I don’t think any of us can say with much precision what my governor will accomplish in the new office whose door he...