Just 555 short years ago last month, troops led by Mehmed II broke through the walls of the ancient Christian capital of Constantinople, ending a gallant defence by Constantine Paleologos, the last king of Byzantium. Just five even shorter days ago, a portly barrister and a ten-year-old almost pulled off the greatest cricket upset ever, but like Byzantium, it was not … [Read More]

“What Would Winston Do?” So asks Newsweek‘s cover, which features a full-length photo of the prime minister his people voted the greatest Briton of them all. Quite a tribute, when one realizes Churchill’s career coincides with the collapse of the British empire and the fall of his nation from world pre-eminence to third-rate power. That the Newsweek cover was sparked by … [Read More]

Victor Davis Hanson has taken umbrage at Pat Buchanan’s description of him as “the court historian of the neoconservatives,” and even more umbrage at Buchanan’s book.  Unfortunately for Hanson, Buchanan’s description of Hanson is accurate, and Hanson’s review of Buchanan’s book shows all the care and intelligence we have come to expect from one of the biggest cheerleaders for Bush’s disastrous … [Read More]

In attacking my book Churchill, Hitler and ‘The Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, Victor Davis Hanson, the court historian of the neoconservatives, charges me with “rewriting ... facts” and showing “ingratitude” to American and British soldiers who fought World Wars I and II.         Both charges are false, and transparently … [Read More]

Richard responded to one of my Eunomia posts on nationalism, and I have been slow in replying, but I think this question still deserves some attention even though we have batted it back and forth for months.  All of us often speak about both communism and nationalism as if they were singular and monolithic for the purposes of general discussion and … [Read More]

Opinions vary with respect to the ongoing conflict in Iraq, but we can all agree that the struggle for Europe, 1939-45, was “the Good War.”  Or can we?  Not if Pat Buchanan is right, and he presents a serious argument in Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, one of the finest achievements of his career.  His principal thesis is that the … [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]

It is odd, to say the least, to read a colleague of mine at this site complaining of someone else’s idiosyncratic positions, as if we prized conformity and predictability here, or attacking his skepticism of mass hysteria directed towards a supposedly pervasive foreign enemy.  It is especially strange to find such derision of anti-anticommunism in Richard’s post, since I very much … [Read More]

Neocon.  Crank.  Appeaser.  Such are the terms that my colleagues have lately been heaping on John Lukacs in response to his review of Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War.  There is something powerful strange about complaints of oversimplification, tendentiousness and axe-grinding expressed through the use of such labels.  While I must defer to Paul Gottfried’s testimony, since I know neither man … [Read More]

Having looked at the review of Pat’s latest book by John Lukacs and the critical remarks offered by Takimag-contributors and having seen the defense of the American Conservative’s commissioning of John’s review posted by Daniel Larison on Eunomia (May 24), I feel impelled to add my two cents. Let me begin with the fact that I have been a personal friend … [Read More]