When nations under the European Union close their borders to protect their people from the coronavirus, the pomposity of the EU is exposed. This is a telling sign that its serpentine grip on its empire is slipping. On April 2, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the EU’s “supreme court,” ruled that its [...]
Many Americans agree that something hasn’t smelled right about this pandemic from the beginning, something in the air that smacks of calculated panic and political engineering. The coronavirus will pass, God willing, but perhaps in its place will come another disease—the relentless leftwing virus. Donald J. Trump has been criticized and condemned for calling COVID-19 [...]
The coronavirus crisis seems to be one of those epochal events that alter the character of the country and the course of the republic. You can't go home again. The shattering events of March, followed by what is coming in April and May, will have lasting impacts on the hearts and minds of this generation. [...]
Are we a less free people, maybe even a far less free people, than we were in 1963? Partial punch-puller that he is content to be, Christopher Caldwell is not about to offer either a tentative or final answer to such questions. But the evidence that he presents strongly suggests that we are certainly a [...]
How does a basement-bound Biden compete with Trump in the Oval Office, Cabinet Room, East Room and Rose Garden? Whom does Biden call upon to rival Trump's instant access to respected leaders eager to come and stand beside the president in the most serious crisis since World War II? "This is the question that is [...]
In our age of clickbait and hyperbole, people call things “unprecedented” that are not unprecedented at all. Public officials shamelessly brag that the nation’s recent economic growth is unequaled. (It’s not.) Broadcasters breathlessly report that today’s anxiety over the stock market is unheard of. (Actually the number of suicides after the Crash of 1929 was [...]
As the clock struck midnight to begin 2020, talk of a new “Roaring Twenties” began in earnest. This portends a wave of retrospectives, historical, fictional, and sensational. One of these will inevitably be Prohibition, the outlawing of the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” or their import/export into the United States and its territories. [...]
When set in motion, panic does not care what is in the way of its mad flight. All must be sacrificed—economy, society, and even worship—in the name of irrational fear. Moreover, it proves difficult to stop. What is missing in our reaction to the coronavirus pandemic is wisdom. In the face of the coronavirus crisis [...]
Who’s right, the public health officials or the economists? That’s the question we are tempted to ask. But in this pandemic, it’s the wrong question. Both sides are right. Franklin D. Roosevelt had his Great Depression. George W. Bush had his Great Recession. And Donald J. Trump has his Great Pandemic. Over the past weeks, [...]
The economic ignorance makes me want to gouge my eyes out. With the coronavirus pandemic upon us, and the topic of 24/7 media coverage, attention has been given to so-called “price gouging.” Webster’s dictionary defines the term simply as “charging customers too much money.” In the context of the current coronavirus panic, the term most [...]
All Americans would probably agree that the current immigration situation is a mess. The proof of this is that no one can discuss the issue without having to defend something awful. Immigration hawks must argue for separating families and deporting people who contribute to the economy while immigration supporters have to account for the “bad [...]
Whatever his criticisms of liberalism, progressivism, and socialism, Eric Voegelin shunned the word and the concept of “conservatism,” claiming that his ideas could never be harnessed by any political movement. When the definitive history of non-leftist movements of the twentieth century is finally written, Austro-American philosopher, Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) will loom large. Arrested by the [...]
The mantra of the globalists has always been that nations are bad and that the “global community” is good. And then the coronavirus reared its ugly head. There are few things worse than pride and prejudice, the arrogance of the former resulting in the ignorance of the latter. And there are few people more afflicted [...]
Closing borders is a grievous offense against liberalism that is supposedly rooted in the sin of xenophobia. But what governments in Europe are saying by closing their borders, what Americans are saying by banning travel from Europe, is that while all men may be created equal, we will always put our own people first, ahead [...]