Listening to George Will pontificate recently on Fox News about his “conservative” principles, I had to ask for the millionth time what Mr. Will and his likeminded friends mean by “conservative.” And I don’t ask this question as a neophyte, having published more on the subject of conservatism than probably anyone else on the planet. But [...]
“I did it my way,” crooned Sinatra. Donald Trump is echoing Ol’ Blue Eyes with the latest additions to his staff. Should he lose, he prefers to go down to defeat as Donald Trump, and not as some synthetic creation of campaign consultants. “I am who I am,” Mr. Trump told a Wisconsin TV station, “It’s [...]
“I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged,” Donald Trump told voters in Ohio and Sean Hannity on Fox News. And that hit a nerve. “Dangerous,” “toxic,” came the recoil from the media. Mr. Trump is threatening to “delegitimize” the election results of 2016. Well, if that is what Mr. Trump is trying to do, he [...]
In order to explain surprising political phenomena like Donald Trump and Brexit, we have to look at the unprecedented impact of new technologies on our total environment. Douglas Rushkoff, the author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, has entertained the thesis that the television age, which brought people together, is over. He opines that [...]
Dear Sir or Madam, I take it that, as a conservative, you will not quibble with the gender binary implied in my salutation, so I’ll just get to the point. Most of you probably didn’t vote for Donald Trump in your primary. You may even have identified with #NeverTrump or #StillNeverTrump or #NeverEverTrump or #AlwaysNeverTrump, [...]
Neoconservatives have garnered a fair amount of media coverage in recent weeks for their determination to keep on with the #nevertrump fight. Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and son of neoconservative founder Irving Kristol, has been especially vocal in his determination to launch a third party challenge to Donald Trump and the eventual [...]
Donald Trump has felt the pulse of the people and taken into account the meaning (and limits) of the Constitution and come up with the outlines of a plan that is both reasonably coherent and (dare I say?) conservative. “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” —Sun-tzu, ca. 400 BC; or Machiavelli, 1520 AD [...]
The world was recently witness to a kerfuffle between two of the most infamous off-the-cuff speakers in the world: Pope Francis and Donald J. Trump. Pope Francis is well-known for getting a rise out of Catholics through ambiguous, spontaneous, airborne pronouncements, while Mr. Trump is well-known for getting a rise out of Americans through aggressive, [...]
If every cloud has a silver lining, we can say that the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump has—whatever his detractors may say—serves some useful purposes. Those most critical of Trump speak of his followers as delirious, as if they were in the grip of some dreadful political fever. Nevertheless, a fever can be useful to [...]
Since China devalued its currency three per cent, global markets have gone into a tailspin. Why should this be? After all, three per cent devaluation in China could be countered by a U.S. tariff of three per cent on all goods made in China, and the tariff revenue used to cut U.S. corporate taxes. The crisis in world [...]