“Different times,” he intoned, “demand different actions,” and Dr. Kirk lit another cigar from his seat on the passenger’s side of the college Buick. “Had I been born in Ancient Egypt,” he ruminated, “I may well have agitated for change, even radical change. But modern times require shoring up the Old Moral Order. They compel [...]
It started soon after dawn as a Philo-Semitic waking dream; a minor fantasy teaching us to value what we have. By late morning it became the fully conscious nightmare of a second Shoah and how it might come to pass. As I woke too early and went back to sleep, it began to unfold. One [...]
On August 24, 1814, in one of history’s most farsighted and selfless moments, British troops burned down Washington, DC. Americans never even thanked them, only rebuilt and wasted the opportunity. Now the bicentennial is only a year away, so let’s make amends. Every heartland town needs a down-home barbecue with children waving American flags and [...]
My name’s Friday. Good Friday. But it’s just a nickname. On the force we’re all good. That’s our job. (Music: DUM-de-dum-dum!) Angela’s my partner. But don’t let her looks fool you. This blonde’s the toughest officer on the beat. She fills out her civvies like a teenager’s dream, but don’t get any ideas. She left [...]
If you’re looking to rhyme all the time with the best, You might become mates with the mad anapest; One metrical foot upon which the pest hops Permits you to pull out the rhythmical stops, Then four friends will find him, all merry wee men: Anapaestic tetrameter’s what you have then; While romping together you [...]
Have you the makings of a Great Libertarian? Might you become a Titan of Liberty like Ayn Rand, a Hercules of Revolutionary Thought like Murray Rothbard or a Paragon of Pure Reason like Walter Block? Or are you doomed to be merely a well-meaning but hopelessly inconsistent conservative muddler like Russell Kirk, Ronald Reagan, Edmund [...]
Who would have thought it? While at times pugnacious, at others scholarly and thoughtful, Pat Buchanan could always be defined as 100% American. Yet the Nixon advisor, the maverick presidential candidate, the sage commentator and respected conservative author has become French; and just as the iconic French actor Gérard Depardieu takes Russian citizenship and half [...]
Professor Yasmin Chan Feldman scowled and handled the stack of papers as if they were mildly toxic. It was a conscious anachronism; the historian printed them because she was proud of being both old and old-fashioned. “I’ll protect your anonymity,” she told her students tartly, “merely to save most of you from embarrassment. Your papers [...]
I found the Great Detective in his Mayfair club as expected at that hour, and we left the Reading Room where talk is forbidden. I had rushed to give him the recently leaked Pakistan Government report on Osama bin Laden, who had rivalled Professor Moriarty in evil cunning. But Holmes had read it already, of [...]
Once again, the West’s contradictory Progressive values render clear thinking impossible, this time over recent upheaval in Egypt. We just love Democracy, but radical Islamists won free and fair and we don’t like them. Military dictatorships, such as who arrested President Morsi and his cabinet, don’t sound like our kind either. Meanwhile millions march in [...]
Western reporting on Iran is an example of our fascinating but increasingly tenuous connection to reality. Overall, media coverage is now so ritualized, restricted by convention and laden with hidden assumptions that it increasingly resembles Japanese classical drama or Balinese shadow-puppetry. A century from now, when scholars sift through the ashes of our civilization, they’re [...]
One of the most delightful things about foreigners and their problems is that it lets us indulge in ignorance, condescension and cheap politics all at once. Besides being good old-fashioned fun, these are the three major principles on which the West now reclines. Take the Turkish riots. To spoil the plot, kids, this mirrors the [...]
Not that one spends much of one’s daily routine sympathising with Oscar Wilde, but his quip on Dickens’ Old Curiosity Shop comes to mind. “One must have a heart of stone,” he said, “to read the death of little Nell without laughing.” He hadn’t read the book or he’d have known that Nell died off-camera, [...]
King Canute by Stephen Masty Canute, the king of Englishmen, Norwegians and the Danes, Had glib courtiers, you may be sure, Who soothed for every sinecure Or privilege they might procure, And caused him royal pains. He bade them all take up his throne Despite the morning damp, And carry it into [...]