Alright, you win. Reading all these blogs, I can’t avoid the subject of fist-pumping Heavy Metal any longer. A metaller since the tender age of 13 (coincidence?), I’ve been worshipping the gods of rock’n’roll even longer. But, don’t worry, that doesn’t stop me from being a proud Orthodox Christian. I’ll use my seasoned veteran status in an attempt to explain why … [Read More]

Can I milk another column out of Mad Men? Why not? Matthew Weiner’s show about Madison Avenue in the early 1960s is so meticulously detailed that it’s worth using it as a spur to consider what has and hasn’t changed in the Zeitgeist over the last half century. • The overall impression Mad Men gives of 1960 is that of a … [Read More]

I read with interest R. J. Stove’s recent blog about new a book by Gerd Bayer, Heavy Metal Music in Britain, and I would like to add my own remarks to Mr. Devin Reid Saucier’s apposite reply. As I pointed in my previous article on Black Metal, and as Devin iterated a few days ago, much has changed in the … [Read More]

As one might surmise, one doesn’t get rich by serving the HL Mencken Club. Unlike other organizations, which have claimed the “conservative” label, belonging to our club is not a ladder to social acceptability or a means of increasing one’s income or deferred annuity allowance. Investing time and energy in an organization like ours is not a wise career move but … [Read More]

Nidal Malik Hasan was two men. One was the proud Army major who wore battle fatigues to mosque; the other, the proud Arab who wore Muslim garb in civilian life. What brought Hasan’s identities into fatal conflict was his belief that Iraq and Afghanistan were unjust wars, and his shock that he, a Muslim, was to be sent to serve in … [Read More]

The U.S. government is now so totally under the thumbs of organized interest groups that “our” government can no longer respond to the concerns of the American people who elect the president and the members of the House and Senate. Voters will vent their frustrations over their impotence on the president, which implies a future of one-term presidents. Soon our presidents … [Read More]

Blanket charges of racism have become the stock-in-trade of the liberal media in reporting on Town-Hall protesters. For converging to petition their representatives about the administration’s profligate policies, independent-minded, patriotic constitutionalists have been savaged by rabid reporters who see signs of the divine in Obama and the devil in his detractors. One apropos sign at a tea party captured this state … [Read More]

Patriotic immigration reformers didn’t have a dog in the NY-23 Congressional special election fight—Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman toed the Club For Growth line, so the issue didn’t surface—but you have to be amazed at the gloating over-interpretation of his very narrow loss (46%-49%). Particularly when you know from bitter experience that a Hoffman win would immediately have been spun down … [Read More]

During last year’s Republican National Convention, South Carolina GOP leaders were regularly calling in to WTMA talk radio in Charleston to provide event coverage. On the day they were supposed to talk to me, I was informed that Republican Party officials did not wish to speak to Jack Hunter. In denouncing big government and all its works, I never saw any … [Read More]

Viva Mexico! Never mind the H1N1 or La Familia Michoacana. There’s more to Mexico than swine flu and drug trafficking, though I never realized it until I traveled to Mexico City for my cousin’s wedding last weekend. Obviously it is hard to ignore the poverty and corruption, especially when cops jack your wallet on the way down to Baja.  On the … [Read More]