The road to the White House often intersects the path of rapidly moving projectiles.  Bravely volunteering to put themselves and their horses, naval vessels and airplanes into the way of arrows bullets , cannonballs torpedoes, and the odd destroyer launched Jackson, Tyler, Lincoln, Grant, Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Bush 41 into the Oval Office ,and Senator McCain’s close encounter with a … [Read More]

Under Consideration: Bill Kauffman, Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Anti-War Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism, Metropolitan Book (2008), 304 pages. Winston Churchill once described the Soviet Union as the only country in the world with an unpredictable past. It was an impressive racket, really, in which the official version of history changed in accordance with the political demands … [Read More]

Ben Stein’s movie Expelled has generated lots of commentary, most of it negative.  Many have claimed that it is obscurantist and hostile to science, a veritable first shot in a wider war against knowledge.  Despite employing the same type of techniques that garnered Michael Moore an Oscar (and much critical acclaim), it has a 9% positive rating at rottentomatoes.com, the sort … [Read More]

I thank Dr. Gottfried for his response, and I appreciate the point that he and several commenters have made.  From the reaction to the last post, I see that I must not have been sufficiently clear about what I meant.  National consciousness did exist prior to the rise of nation-states, and indeed was the basis for the cultivation of nationalist feeling … [Read More]

Although I am second to none in my respect for Dan Larison as a political commentator, his remarks about nationalism and nation states are for the most part historically inaccurate. The Serb blogger who noted that a Serb national consciousness had existed for centuries before a Serb nation state came into existence is absolutely correct about Serbia and about European nation … [Read More]

If they’re any good, superhero movies speak to something larger than just kicking, flying, punching, and rescuing: Batman strikes a nerve as the vigilante, perhaps motivated by revenge, who is attacked by the very people he protects (a kind anarcho-tyranny story, if you will). Although Marvel and Warner Bros. ensured that “Iron Man” would be edgy and hip by hiring Robert … [Read More]

In a very good column on Pope Benedict’s visit and the clashing theologies of the Pope and the President, Scott Richert made an important series of points related to the earlier patriotism/nationalism debate we were having here: “On occasion, here and elsewhere, I have described President Bush as a nationalist, and I’m almost always taken to task immediately by those who … [Read More]

As Martin Luther King is now regarded as the nation’s premiere secular saint, virtually every single cause tries to attach itself to his legacy. It is therefore not terribly surprising that the pro-life movement tries to construe King as pro-life. Charles Colson, for example, said “Were he alive today, I believe he would be in the vanguard of the pro-life movement.”  … [Read More]

I just flew in from Rome, and boy is my liver tired. Given the turbulence you get in trans-Atlantic flights—this was only my third flight from Europe—a high-strung sanguine choleric like me needs some kind of chemical cocktail to keep him from panicking every time the Airbus goes Boeing-Boeing-Boeing. I used to take a leftover dental Vicodin and wash it down … [Read More]

It would be no exaggeration to say that Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class made possible for the first time the scientific study of culture. The ideologies that arise from time to time to justify the peculiar, useless or destructive tastes of a particular class—from barbarian warriors (Song of Roland) and effete gentlemen (Newman’s Idea of the University) to moralistic … [Read More]