This account by William R. Hawkins of the debate on the Iraq war held at the recent meeting of the John Randolph Club, in Washington, D.C., is hilarious, albeit unintentionally. That he somehow managed to write a 1000-word-plus article about that event without once mentioning that Peter Brimelow, the editor of Vdare.com, and a staunch conservative of the paleo persuasion, was one of three debaters on the “out now” side, is really quite an achievement. The reason he did so, I imagine, is to buttress his thesis that labels me a “left-libertarian,” a sinister “anarchist,” who, along with co-debater Kirkpatrick Sale … 
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The Waverly Inn on Bank Street, here in the Big Apple, is the hottest ticket in town. Owned by Graydon Carter, the Vanity Fair honcho, it became the chicest place for dinner even before it opened. (Graydon opened it unofficially for friends of his). It is located on a quiet Greenwich Village street which would do justice to an Edward Hopper painting, and the interior resembles the way small inns used to look like before Planet Hollywood and other such atrocities came into being. The clientelle is mostly bold-faced names, artsy fartsy types and lotsa young people. The service is impeccable … 
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The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States, by Gerald Horne, New York University Press, 2007: 227 pp.   Few figures in the history of American political movements and ideologies are as mysterious as Lawrence Dennis. Seditionist, “fascist ideologue,” child preacher, ideological and racial changeling, Dennis’s career was not just variegated – it was surreal. He is mentioned, if at all, in histories of the 1930s and 40s as America’s foremost intellectual proponent of fascism, and this characterization has stuck to him like mud right up to the present day. This … 
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You may have heard of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. But you probably haven’t heard of The Man Who Killed Robert Lowell. So who did kill Robert Lowell? Well, I have a horrible suspicion that I did. Quite accidentally, you understand. It happened like this (members of the jury). In 1974, the year I turned 13, my parents—having accurately and soberly diagnosed me as a congenital unemployable—needed to confront the question of where to put me in the interval before I could be inflicted on an unsuspecting job market. I was marginally too clever for a sheltered workshop, and the … 
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President Bush’s nominee to replace Alberto Gonzales as attorney general is making waves because of who he is (the first Orthodox Jew to be nominated for the position) as well as for what is not (a known quantity on issues that matter to social conservatives, such as abortion and the relationship between Church and state).  A former federal judge, nominated by Ronald Reagan in 1987, Mukasey has presided over only one abortion-related case, in which he ruled that a Chinese man could not be granted political asylum in the United States because he feared political reprisal for having attempted to prevent … 
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Reading reviews in the national press about Norman Podhoretz’s The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism (Doubleday), I was struck by how oblivious to certain facts the reviewers of this book seem to be. Haven’t Ian Buruma of the New York Review of Books, Jay Nordlinger of National Review,  Amer Tahiri of the New York Post or any of the other establishment reviewers noticed that Podhoretz knows nothing about “fascism?” His references to this particular phenomenon show all the sophistication of an Abe Foxman tirade designed for ADL donors.  Quite conveniently for himself, Podhoretz links all unpleasant Muslims to a European political movement … 
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The formula that I have long toyed with the notion of revealing is nowadays the intellectual property of Conde Nast, yet the kind of article discussed here would not look out of place in any of number of niche publications, from Plage and Piste to the more sombre Snort! and Anorexia Today. Still more encouraging for the canny sycophant considering journalism as a career is the fact that successful editors everywhere, including those on magazines believed to be serious and newspapers known as highbrow, will always respect a quality product manufactured according to the formula, in contrast to something thrown together … 
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This exchange between Michael Scheuer —former head of the bin Laden unit and author of the brilliant Imperial Hubris —and the idiotic Bill Maher is a classic: Synopsis of the good part: Maher asks “Why are they trying to attack us?”—and then answers his own question, opining “As long as there’s an israel in the world, and I’m a big supoorter of Israel ... they’re always going to be going after us.” Scheuer: I disagree with you Maher: Which part? Israel? Yes, says Scheuer, I just don’t think it’s worth an American life or an American dollar. Not only Israel, but … 
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The National Post opines: “Of all the provocative things for the Iranian president to say in his rambling address, the strangest has to be his contention that there are no gay people in Iran.” Yet not so strange, if you understand his point of view. In Iran, you see, homosexuals are thought of as women trapped in male bodies. That’s why they offer free operations for those who want to change their sex (from male to female, that is. Women into men would be too much for them to handle.) In the Persian mindset—and in much of the Muslim world—anyone who … 
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To a certain extent, all of us are what we think. And what we read determines our thoughts. Ergo, we are the product of what we read. No wonder I am confused most of the time. What I have been reading lately is terribly confusing and contradictory. I would prefer to be enjoying the poetry of Andrew Marvell and Robert Herrick, the orations of the American Indians, and poems from ancient Greece. As it is, I am stuck in a world of geopolitics and the current American scene, where everything is up for grabs. There is much mendacity and cocksureness, but … 
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