I know few liberals who support the War on Drugs, marriage “protection” amendments or the PATRIOT Act. In fact, if you talk to the most vocal Leftists about drug criminalization, gay marriage or the loss of civil liberties, their anti-government rhetoric can sound downright reactionary. “Government has within it a tendency to abuse its powers” said John C. Calhoun. Today, much … [Read More]

While a large segment of the Alternative Right believes it is time to abandon the term “conservative” altogether, I’m not so sure.  From where I stand, turning over an intellectual tradition that includes men like Russell Kirk and Robert Nisbet to a movement that regards Sean Hannity as a serious thinker is surrendering far too much.  The reputations of these great … [Read More]

What would we think if the legislature in one of America’s most highly educated states, Connecticut, were debating a law that forced Orthodox synagogues to perform mixed marriages? What if the New York legislature were pushing through a law that made religious slaughterhouses uniquely liable for lawsuits—and left secular meat-packers exempt? And what if both houses of Congress and the president … [Read More]

The following text was delivered at a rally in defense of the Tenth Amendment, held at the statehouse in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on March 16, 2009 and organized by Representative Samuel Rohrer. The rally was well attended and the hundreds of people who crowded the rotunda, and who were shown on TV, carried such signs as “Give Us Back States Rights!” and … [Read More]

Under discussion: Watching the Door: Cheating Death in 1970s Belfast, Atlantic Books (2009), 288 pages.  The recent killings in Northern Ireland have everybody over there wondering whether this is a dying sputter of republican terrorism, or the beginning of a new round of “Troubles.” Two British soldiers were killed on the evening of March 7, when they went to the gate … [Read More]

For many, the Obama era promised to break down the racial barriers and bugaboos of old and herald in a new age of understanding, in which Americans could finally discuss and debate issues based on nothing but honorable intentions. Apparently Congressman Jim Clyburn did not receive the memo. The ridiculous extent to which the word “racist” has been used and abused … [Read More]

During Nixon’s historic trip to China in 1972, his interpreter and I, free for a few hours, conscripted a driver to take us on a tour of Beijing. Somewhere in my files are photos from that day we toured the grim city of Chairman Mao in the time of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The interpreter: Charles Freeman—the same Charles Freeman … [Read More]

...the More Washington’s Quest for Global Dominance Stays the Same..  The war waged by the U.S.-led North Atlantic Alliance against Serbia started ten years ago and it is substantively unfinished to this day. That Clinton’s war was illegal, illegitimate, aggressively premeditated, justified by blatant falsehoods, and “objectively” disastrous in its consequences, is eminently beyond dispute to the remaining thinking men. We … [Read More]

Fear and longing for the 1970s. Most of us, I suspect, are rather nervous these days. One cannot help but wonder, if we are, indeed, experiencing the 21st century equivalent of 1929 or 1930—and if 1939 isn’t too far away. There is a strange feeling of disconnect in the air: for those of us who do not share the optimism (or … [Read More]

Well, Ross Douthat got to the top of the greasy pole about as briskly as if it were a step ladder. Just eight years ago, I met him in his college dormroom, where he ran a weekly symposium for campus right-wingers. Now 29 years old, he’s a New York Times columnist.  We all behold with envious eyes / Our equals raised … [Read More]