In 1980, Democratic President Jimmy Carter lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan, 489-49 in the Electoral College. So naturally, Democrats concluded that Reagan had committed treason in order to steal the election, to wit: His campaign ...

Exactly fifty years ago last month I was lolling by the pool of the St. Georges Hotel in Beirut surrounded by bikini-clad women of uncertain virtue, spooks, pimps, journalists, and rotund Lebanese playboys who gave a bad name to the ...

Now that academics have abandoned BC (Before Christ) for BCE (Before the Common Era), though without explaining for whom or to what the Era is Common, the initials BC are available again for use, and I should suggest that they be taken ...

There comes a time in life when one is more interested in the past than in the future. In my case, I reached it very early: I cannot remember a time when the past was not more alluring to me than the future as a subject of thought and ...

The “Islamic Renaissance” that Sultan Erdogan campaigns for today has little to do with what the Christian world experienced centuries ago. Then, Europe unearthed the beauty of the statues of Greece and Rome (fortunately there was ...

I have never been quite able to make up my mind whether there is no new thing under the sun or whether we live in completely unprecedented times. When we look at events close up and nearby in time and place, we are inclined to think ...

When indolence becomes intolerable, remembrances of things past become a lifesaver. Charles Moore’s recent Spectator notes also helped; for example, his stories about the 94-year-old Lady Penn, who is the Queen of England’s closest ...

As this week’s column will run on the final day of the year, I thought I’d break format and do something a little different. People often ask me, “Dave, where do you get your story ideas?” Why, from my Mossad handlers, of ...

Another year, another 365 days of walking, talking human headaches. Sometimes I don’t know why I simply don’t look away from it all—and then, when I can’t come up with an answer, I begin getting annoyed with myself. With the ...

War is fought on two fronts: the battlefield and the mind. Whereas superior strategy and firepower wins it on the battlefield, the war for the mind is won by successfully tarring and feathering your opponent with guilt. The guilt ...

The only true love is summer love, as the saying by Giacomo Casanova goes. Actually it’s mine, as the Venetian was too slick to differentiate between love seasons. The reason I find summer love the truest is because it has its limits. ...

Pedants delight in error, not in truth, and fall upon it like scavengers on a carcass. I have books, pre-owned—or even pre-loved, as dealers in secondhand objects are now inclined to call them—in which pedants have underlined or ...