Daniel J. Flynn has written a book for Crown Press, A Conservative History of the American Left, which is intended to be a “conservative” interpretation of the Left in our country. Although Dan could have presented his study of the American Left and its nineteenth-century models without identifying himself or his work politically, he may have appended “conservative” in order to … [Read More]

I’ll admit this up front: On the subject of Pat Buchanan, I’m not an objective observer. Since 1992, when he launched his creative dissent from the faltering conservative movement, my admiration for him has grown and deepened. My first job in journalism—obtained through an Operation Rescue connection—was lost over a letter I wrote in Pat’s defense to The New Republic. (Some … [Read More]

Although its their own internecine fight, I have been impressed at the main stream media’s manipulation and outright partisan interference in the Democratic primary. One doesn’t have to be a fan of the Clintons to see what’s going on—long before Obama finally went over the top in terms of delegates, we witnessed an overt attempt by the main stream media to … [Read More]

The Manichaean syndrome … the good guys vs. the bad guys … the easy generalizations … the business of guilt and blackmail ... it goes on… Patrick Buchanan is famous as a populist and staunch conservative, but he’s also a gadfly:  He raises the important issues others ignore; he smashes the sacred idols; he asks troubling questions and proposes the answers … [Read More]

I love politics and movies. So it’s probably not surprising that I enjoy political documentaries, like Errol Morris‘s “The Fog of War”, a portrait of one of the leading architects of the Vietnam War, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. The film which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, compresses 20 hours of interviews that Morris conducted with the controversial … [Read More]

When President Bush, before the Knesset, used the word “appeasement” to label those who would negotiate with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he invoked the most powerful analogy in any debate over war and peace. No man wishes to be regarded as an “appeaser.” But, as this writer has discovered since my book Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its … [Read More]

May I, even at this late stage of the John Lukacs controversy, offer a few thoughts that do not seem to have been articulated elsewhere on this site? Readers have now stepped into a first-person authorial zone. They should be, accordingly, warned. I have on my shelves a 2004 edition of Dr. Lukacs’s A Student’s Guide to the Study of History. … [Read More]

The following is the first installment in a three-part critical symposium on Patrick Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler, and the “Unnecessary War.”  It is not surprising that Pat Buchanan’s new book, exploring the collapse of the British Empire and the connection of that disaster to England’s involvement in two world wars, should have received a strong endorsement from George F. Kennan, written (it … [Read More]

America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan both involve fractious societies, weak governments installed by force from without, rampant criminality, persistent insurgencies, and the spectre of unknown costs from a U.S. withdrawal. The chief reason we are told to stay on both battlefields—in particular Afghanistan—is that they may become natural havens for terrorists without U.S.-imposed order. Yet the dominant rhetoric of critics … [Read More]