A year after taking power, in June 1934, Adolf Hitler made his first visit abroad—to his idol Benito Mussolini in Venice. Babbling on incessantly about Mein Kampf and the Negroid strain in Mediterranean peoples, the Führer made a dismal impression. “What a clown this Hitler is,” Mussolini told an aide. Two weeks later, Hitler executed the Roehm purge and murdered scores … [Read More]

I grew up in the age of the party convention as “everything’s already been decided” made-for-TV special, and thus I have a certain vicarious nostalgia for the days when these get-togethers were rowdy, contested, dramatic affairs—when, say, Bill Rusher was calling out orders to delegates on the floor via walky-talky while organizing the unlikely nomination of Barry Goldwater in ’64. Something … [Read More]

I love political conventions, in part because I remember the olden days, when there was some doubt as to their outcome. Nowadays, of course, party conventions are carefully choreographed events, as is the coverage. I’m watching MSNBC, out of habit, but their “reporting” is barely tolerable: it’s like watching what one imagines Soviet television must have been like, “covering” the latest … [Read More]

Last week it dawned on me while listening to the two major presidential candidates talk about abortion that their topic meant about as much to them as river boat gambling. Like having gambling facilities placed on the edge of a river from whose activities the state can then draw revenues, the politics of abortion means a lot for some groups, especially … [Read More]

Recently at Takimag, there have been a number of critiques by the articulate, provocative, and acerbic Austin Bramwell. Bramwell questions the idea of the “conservative canon” as something of a put up job by the conservative establishment, and argues that many of the canonical conservative authors would not be in print—must less read—without the support of their respective coteries. Bramwell asks … [Read More]

Rather as God cares about every sparrow that falls to earth, no crisis anywhere escapes the attention of the U.S. government. So it has been with the Russo-Georgian war. Words continue to flood forth from Washington—Georgia stands for freedom and democracy, Russia must be punished, Abkhazia and South Ossetia are part of Georgia, the U.S. and Europe must stand by Tbilisi. … [Read More]

When Pat Buchanan and I founded The American Conservative back in 2002,  we held a press conference in Washington’s National Press Club. One of the first questions posed was how come Pat, famous for his espousal of family values, could ally himself with “a famous philanderer” like myself. Pat handled it well. One needs a sense of humor at such times, … [Read More]

Last week in this space I was grossly unfair to a vast swathe of our country, one of America’s most hard-working and patriotic regions. In mocking the Midwest as humorless—indeed, affectless—I surely offended many thousands of my fellow citizens. And I did it without thinking, or considering the effect my words might have. That is what’s so great about writing … [Read More]

Who is Randy Scheunemann? He is the principal foreign policy adviser to John McCain and potential successor to Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski as national security adviser to the president of the United States. But Randy Scheunemann has another identity, another role. He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood … [Read More]

In one of his best TAC columns, Fred Reed took issue with the kind of contrived story telling engaged in by many of the practitioners of so-called “evolutionary psychology,” including one fellow, whom Reed came across, who’d just written an article expanding on the subject of why guys like the girls with big knockers. It’s all about the reproductive strategic signalling, … [Read More]