There was a time a few decades ago when many people I knew did not merely want to be like P.J. O’Rourke, they actually wanted to be him. This largely included me, despite the fact that, even at my most young and stupid I recognized drug use for what it is: enslavement to the most [...]
In a stunning display of moral arrogance and effete pique, David Brooks recently savaged Ted Cruz as a purveyor of “pagan brutalism” unfit to call himself a Christian, let alone lead a nation. Mr. Brooks, whose career rests on his role as liberal elites’ arbiter of conservative conduct, lost his well-coiffed cool as he descended [...]
Like most members of the Republican leadership in both Houses of Congress, Paul Ryan should be voted out of office, in the primary, by the majority of his constituents who are significantly more conservative than he is. But Mr. Ryan should not be replaced because of his role in engineering passage of the vast omnibus [...]
Both Monticello and Mount Vernon are imposing estates. Both Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were imposing historical figures. What do the homes tell us about the statesmen? Quite a bit. Practically since the nation’s founding, there have been those, particularly among intellectuals, who deprecate the reserved, stoic, and to some stolid Washington. Such people much [...]
Long used as a justification for affirmative action, diversity is in many ways more useful and sustainable as a freestanding program of action for those hostile to our inherited traditions. It sounds self-justifying. Who could be against diversity in a polyglot society such as ours? The Supreme Court currently is considering the case of Fisher [...]
(Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to journey with Bruce Frohnen as he explores T.S. Eliot’s understanding of the role of literature and Christianity in culture. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher) T.S. Eliot indisputably was, and remains, in the first rank of poets of any era and any culture.[1] [...]
Bernie Sanders, the Democrats’ only (openly) socialist presidential candidate joined the chorus of criticism against Walmart a while back. But many conservatives also spend a good deal of time and effort criticizing the discount store giant. The mass hysteria of Christmas shopping season provides an opportunity to reconsider Walmart—at least to a certain, limited extent. [...]
The national debt has surged more than half a trillion dollars in the last three weeks, as the suspension of the debt ceiling in late October has allowed the government to borrow as much as it wants. — Report in The Washington Examiner America’s national debt is approaching $19 trillion, and has surged over the least [...]
The crybullies currently raging through American campuses collecting scalps (oops! microaggression) have set their sights on dead villains as well as live ones. The motivation is the same, of course, to harness the resentment they have learned in school as a tool of self-aggrandizement in power, influence, and cheap pride. This will not end well [...]
What is to become of Christianity in the West? When the faithful lose their voice, who will care what they believe? Who will join them, or even know that they exist? This is how religions die. Renaissance political thinker Niccolo Machiavelli castigated Christianity for making its adherents weak. Looking to the next world, he charged, [...]
The Constitution cannot provide absolute protection for individual rights for the simple reason that rights are not absolute. Its more essential purpose is to set out a form of government and to provide for ordered liberty. I have often thought that Americans believe the Framers of their Constitution actually bequeathed to them a bill of [...]
“College professors are overwhelmingly liberal. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it.” This statement was not made by a conservative academic, columnist, or businessman. It was made by sometime professor and left-wing commentator Damon Linker. There is some good news in the fact of Mr. Linker’s acknowledgement of the obvious—but not much. American [...]
It is sad that bourbon, Bibles, and bullets have become countercultural. Thank goodness, then, for Tim Allen and his show, “Last Man Standing,” which is a rare example on television of manly fortitude in this, our Gelded Age. The popular television series “Last Man Standing” is not conservative in any deep sense. This is fitting [...]
David Brooks, the in-house Republican at the New York Times, recently wrote an angry column aimed at conservatives (whom he dubbed “right-wing radicals,” among other unfriendly epithets). Elsewhere it has been pointed out, in essence, that someone like Mr. Brooks who pronounced Barack Obama suited for high office on account of the amazingly sharp crease in [...]