You Shall Love Your Country—By Order of the State! If searching for a personification of everything that is wrong with modern American conservatism, Tony Blankley might be your man. With his impeccable movement credentials, the former staffer for Newt Gingrich has long been deft at disseminating GOP talking points for any media outlet that will give him a hearing, and as … [Read More]

If subtlety is central to good art, then the new Miramax presentation of Brideshead Revisited fails on every account. Not only does this film fall short of a decent adaptation, but it was painful to watch. Evelyn Waugh’s novel by the same name ranks as one of the greats of the 20th century. In it, Waugh portrays the terribly flawed Marchmain … [Read More]

What a Rich Pyre!, by Russell Setiz Being a poem in the style of “Under Which Lyre?” WH Auden’s adieu to WWII, which Norman Podhoretz ought to have read before taking the poet’s name in vain in his epic fantasy, World War IV.   The Bushies at last have quit the field, The Weekly Standard’s bloodstains yield   To seeping showers, … [Read More]

Having sat on a boat for the last five weeks, I’ve had plenty of time to reflect, and reflect I did. Getting old tends to make one look back, nostaligize for that green light of the dock, and, of course,  the great F.Scott Fitzgerald himself. Yes, he was the master of evoking the grand old days, when Gatsby boys wore white … [Read More]

Although this all too brief commentary cannot do full justice to the three works that recently arrived in my mail, it should provide useful information about each of them. The first that came to my hand Wandlungen des Neoliberalismus (Stuttgart: Lucius, 2008), by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung-economic editor, Philip Plickert, was submitted in an earlier form as a doctoral study at … [Read More]

This is the second of two posts critiquing Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam’s new book, Grand New Party. This first can be found here. I wrote previously that “Douthat and Salam neither defend nor stick to a consistent theory of what motivates voters.”  At least three such theories appear in Grand New Party: 1. First, some voters collect political allegiances as … [Read More]

Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam have won near universal acclaim for their book, Grand New Party (albeit not from the editors of Taki’s Magazine—see here, here, and here). I trust, therefore, that they will not take umbrage at my criticisms, of which this will be the first of two installments. First, what is more of a complaint than a criticism, Grand … [Read More]