To combat Islamic terrorists more effectively, the US government should spend some real energy on image management, perhaps hiring a big Hollywood guru. Consider Maliki’s alleged insouciance. It’s good for the mission for us to get slapped down by Maliki if it appeases the honor-obsessed locals. Indeed, it may have a double benefit: slowing down the insurgents and providing a face-saving … [Read More]

Deterrence was profferred as a legitimate, noninterventionist solution to the problem of Iranian and other Third World nations’ nuclear weapons in the earlier discussion. Nuclear proliferation to the Third World in general is a problem because such countries are less likely to keep a tight hold on their nukes, rocked as they are by periodic coups, a culture of endemic bribery, … [Read More]

The Iraq Campaign has more or less discredited the idea of preemptive war to stop the acquisition of nuclear weapons by unfriendly nations.  But does our unlucky situation in Iraq mean we should never use force to prevent nations such as Iran from getting nuclear weapons? Let me explore some paleoconservative heresies. Nuclear arms would make Iran an order of magnitude … [Read More]

During the Cold War, conservatives rightly pointed out that the collectivist materialism of the Soviet Union was anti-human in the worst ways.  It elevated the state to mythic proportions.  It denied the value of individual human beings.  It suppressed the human spirit and focused on minimal material comfort to the exclusion of other values.  The state could undo social injustices, we … [Read More]

Conservatives historically have taken pride in their hard-headedness.  It is supposed to be a manly persuasion with a long view, rooted in concepts like deferred gratification, the proper appreciation of applied violence, skepticism of fads and fashions, and a dour view of human nature.  In lean economic times, conservatives counsel austerity and sound money, even if this means very painful effects … [Read More]

The Supreme Court has provided another nail in the coffin of executive war powers in its recent opinion on the rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees.  Earlier decisions by the court in Hamdan and Rasul ignored statutory enactment after statutory enactment that deprived these detainees of access the courts.  This is certainly not an issue of the Court trying to divine legislative … [Read More]

Liberalism views much of history as a morality play.  The past was very bad.  We are making progress.  The future will be better.  But every new achievement serves also as an indictment.  The past is guilty of offending the liberal goals of inclusion and equality.  As Lawrence Auster has noted, every advance of inclusion and equality is an indication of how … [Read More]

America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan both involve fractious societies, weak governments installed by force from without, rampant criminality, persistent insurgencies, and the spectre of unknown costs from a U.S. withdrawal. The chief reason we are told to stay on both battlefields—in particular Afghanistan—is that they may become natural havens for terrorists without U.S.-imposed order. Yet the dominant rhetoric of critics … [Read More]

At the end of the Cold War, conservatives found themselves in a state of disunity and intellectual ferment. The neoconservative faction demanded a continuation of the Cold War model of interventionist foreign policy and rejected the domestic small government conservatism popular in the South and West.  Neo-nationalists, such as Pat Buchanan, pushed for a turn inward, the rejection of various liberal … [Read More]

It seems everyone wanted to be on the side of progress in the Seventies, but today everyone’s a Burkean.  Gay marriage advocates, Barack Obama supporters, and defenders of the welfare state all identifiy themselves as the rightful heirs of Edmund Burke, the grandfather of conservative philosophy.  This is a strange development.  Burke and the conservatism he preached have long been relegated … [Read More]