Many years ago, as a young diplomat straining to learn French, I was amused to realize that the French word for bread is spelled pain. Of course, it is not pronounced as such, but being steadfastly immature well into adulthood, I was nonetheless inclined to laugh each time I saw the word. For me, bread [...]
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Joseph Mussomeli, as he considers Christmas as a revolution of the heart against the demands of this world for balancing the scales and righting every wrong with a hard justice. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher I. When the Outlandish Is the Only [...]
December 1969 (New Jersey) “Christmas,” the old priest snarled, “is an outrage!” He looked about the classroom, hoping to have awakened at least a few students. “Christmas violates the laws of nature and of man.” Some students seemed to be attentive, although it was mid-December and even talking about Christmas was too distracting when they [...]
The 11th hour of the 11th day of this November marks the centennial of the end of World War I, the end of European ascendancy on the world stage, and the rise of American global power. For some the end of World War I also demarcates the end of a more innocent, more civilized world [...]
Since I was a little boy, I have been taught that it is a sacred duty to vote. That if you don't vote, you have no right to complain—that true patriots care enough to vote, even if for a lesser evil. But how is it that the same system that dishes out the same unworthy [...]
We have all seen the scene at least once, although some of us have savored it perhaps dozens of times. The handsome, dynamic, misunderstood, modernizing young king, with his slender physique, slender beard, and even more slender morals, strutting about the banquet hall knocking the plates and goblets off the table in a drunken frenzy. [...]
Despite all the unfounded fear on the left and all the equally unfounded euphoria on the right, there will be no wholesale revamping by the Supreme Court of the liberal social order that is now deeply rooted in our culture and among our people. The conservative justices' ethos of evolution over revolution will forestall any [...]
Two questions should always be asked over and over again before security measures are implemented: At what point do security measures impede security? And at one point is a free people no longer free? It has been quiet recently here in the homeland. Terrorist bombs and other attacks continue unabated in the Middle East and sporadically in Europe, but it has [...]
Like his predecessors, President Trump is now convinced that staying the course militarily throughout the Middle East is our only choice, worrying that a “hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists would instantly fill." If that is the standard, we will stay forever... Despite this President’s sometimes confused perspective on international relations, his world [...]
A foreign policy firmly based on consistency, restraint, and adherence to our founding principles would ultimately achieve what most of us mistakenly believe we already possess: an American Exceptionalism admired and envied by the world... Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Joseph Mussomeli as he invites us [...]
I sometimes still worry that all the publicity centering around 9/11 drowns out the cries of those who died that day. I don’t want that to happen. The tragedy of their dying was corrupted from the very start by our leaders who failed to understand why they died and who used their dying for their [...]
Are we a nation of ethnic and racial groupings, or are we a nation of individuals, each unique and deserving of equal opportunity unhampered by racial or gender prejudice? For the first two centuries of our nation’s history—indeed, for most of the world’s recorded history—the great Cult of Exclusivity held sway. More commonly known [...]
A nuclear-armed Iran is something that the world community should strive to prevent, but in the long run our pushing Iran into a corner will be detrimental to both the United States and Israel… 1. Iran is the Leading State Sponsor of Terrorism The State Department has been regurgitating this mindless drivel for decades [...]
The year 1989 may well be seen by future historians as one of those rare pivotal years of this past millennium—like 1066, 1492, 1793, and 1914—that profoundly altered the direction of Western Civilization. It is, of course, still too early to say for certain that we as a society set ourselves on a dangerous [...]