I have trouble even talking with people about “healthcare reform.” The problem is, whenever someone says something like “46 million Americans are uninsured!” (usually followed by a drawn-out sigh of moral outrage), I answer back, “Good to hear. If only we could get more people off insurance, then prices would fall and efficiency would increase.” Needless to say, this usually doesn’t … [Read More]

Sure, we should all give “two (very qualified) cheers” for Irving Kristol (1920-2009), the tireless writer, political eminence grise, and longtime editor at Commentary, Encounter, The Public Interest, and The National Interest, who left this world last Friday. Kristol was, on many levels, emblematic of a whole generation of American Jewish intellectuals. His journey, recounted in histories and his own “autobiographical” … [Read More]

In two successive editorials in the Washington Post, George Will has officially announced that it’s time to bring our national boondoggles to an end and begin pulling out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Said Will of Iraq: After almost 6 1/2 years, and 4,327 American dead and 31,483 wounded, with a war spiraling downward in Afghanistan, it would be indefensible for the … [Read More]

I should first admit that it took quite a lot for me to actually go see Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino’s latest about a special Army unit of Jewish avengers, led by a half-Cherokee Good Ol’ Boy, who rampage through German-occupied France, killing, scalping, and/or branding top Nazis, eventually slaughtering no less than the German Führer. I’m certainly not against counter-factual reverie, … [Read More]

Though it’s been said that a “liberal” is someone willing to argue against his own position in a dispute, a characteristic quality of the contemporary American variety is that he thinks anyone who disagrees with him is either obstructing democracy or else racist and insane (at any rate, he should probably be apprehended by the authorities.) Take, for instance, this from … [Read More]

It will be Twitterized! Leave it to the neocons, their congressional allies, and much of the “conservative” blogosphere to make Barack Obama look like an elder statesman of Burkean inclinations. As the newly color-coded “Green Revolution” unfolds on Twitter and other hipster-powered social networks, The Messiah has been rather circumspect in his public statements: saying that he thinks the Iranian people’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]

For a webzine attempting to carve out an “Alternative Right,” and one dedicated to a fearless assault on PC in all its varieties, the topics of “race” and “white identity” are bound to come up—along with some questions that make most modern-minded Americans squirm in their chairs: Is race real? (Genetically speaking, that is, and not just as a cultural gloss … [Read More]

Someone once told to me that at a John Randolph Club meeting back in the ‘90s, a man in the audience asked Sam Francis whether a recent GOP initiative, a big new social program or backdoor amnesty or some such thing, spelled the death of the party. Sam’s retort, “Well, I sure hope so!” The crowd erupted. If the Democrats were … [Read More]

Not too long ago, Christopher Hitchens was busying himself justifying George W. Bush, the neocons, and the Iraq war—er, “liberation”—on avowedly Marxian grounds. (It would seem justifying Dubya, Frumy, and Wolfowitz requires some kind to recourse of Marxism.) And the columnist was rewarded with the warm embrace of the flagship of American conservatism. In the Age of Obama, Hitch has himself … [Read More]