During the height of New York City’s financial crisis in the 1970’s, President Gerald Ford had the good sense to turn down Mayor Abe Beame’s request for a federal bailout. The refusal prompted the famous New York Post headline, “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” More than 30 years later, as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a similar plea to Washington, I … [Read More]

First there was “The Decider.” Then came Big Man Obama. “The Decider” is the nickname George Bush gave his all-powerful self. To go by the dictionary, and “within the context of political science, big man, big man syndrome, or bigmanism refers to corrupt and autocratic rule of countries by a single person.” “The Decider” habitually sidestepped the chain of command in … [Read More]

One must be a person without discernible intelligence or conservative inclination to be allowed to write for the New York Times as a “conservative” columnist. Otherwise someone would not likely be picked to represent the “other side” by a publication that makes cultural Marxists look downright reactionary. Although I would not normally clutter my mind with the words of such commentators, … [Read More]

When you think about it, Sonia Sotomayor is the perfect pick for the Supreme Court—in Barack Obama’s America. Like Obama, himself a beneficiary of affirmative action, she thinks “Latina women,” because of their life experience, make better judicial decisions than white men, that discrimination against white men to advance people of color is what America is all about, that appellate courts … [Read More]

Has Franz Rosenzweig’s time come? Beats me. Let’s start with: who the hell was Franz Rosenzweig? Like many, I would never have heard of him had it not been for sometime Takimag contributor David P. Goldman, who for the past decade has been putting events in world-historic perspective under the pseudonym “Spengler” at the Asia Times Online. (Goldman recently revealed some … [Read More]

My paleo friends must have laughed themselves silly at the sight of Mark Levin and David Frum going at each other like Tybalt and Benvolio in the streets of Verona. Ah, but what of Rod Dreher, who now sides with Frum against Levin? A spanner in the works for those whose rule is, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” … [Read More]

Jared Taylor’s recent posting on Takimag has drawn a number of a responses, including from Paul Gottfried and Richard Spencer, both of which make some good points. I’m afraid, however, that neither really hits on the essential problem—although Gottfried does mention it in passing, almost as an afterthought—which is that Taylor’s call for whites to organize along lines of “racial solidarity” … [Read More]

While economists and real estate investors “celebrate” the slight deceleration in the pace of home price declines in the recent data, a quick look at home price trajectories over the past 100 and 50 years reveals little to cheer about and much to be feared. More significant than small month-to-month changes is the flow of home price patterns over decades. In … [Read More]

On the subject of torture, former CIA terrorism expert Michael Scheuer obviously disagrees with President Obama. He also disagrees with me. But he also disagrees with both Obama and Dick Cheney, when it comes to the bigger picture. In the same defense of the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the Washington Post, Scheuer began his column, writing: “George W. Bush’s … [Read More]

Once upon a time, there were The Founders. Though tragically trapped in their slave holding and lack of gender and ethnic diversity, these wise fellows envisioned that on the American continent might arise a new nation that would evolve into exactly what we have today. And in order to make this dream a reality, they emitted a pool of timeless and … [Read More]