From Spandrell: here, here, and here are three posts outlining an idea — “Bioleninism” — that seeks to explain the steady movement leftward of political systems, and the shift, beginning in the 1960s or so, from economic to cultural Marxism as the vehicle for that movement. The model seems coherent and plausible. It also has […]
I’m driving all day, but for now here’s a brief item on the political consequences of shifting American demographics. Rising diversity at national scale increases tribalism, destroys cohesion, diminishes liberty, and fosters divisive competition that throughout history always tends toward fission and violence. What fools we are.
President Trump yesterday announced that the U.S. would no longer consider itself bound by the deal his predecessor had made with Iran. His critics, both here and abroad, are writhing and hissing like Gollum with the Elven-rope around his neck: To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, only someone with a heart of stone could witness their pain […]
My friend Bill Vallicella, having read our recent post and comment-thread on Rod Dreher’s essay on Marx (see Bill’s recent post on the same article, here), noted my formulation of the consistent principle of our opponents in the current culture war: Defend your people, always. Attack the enemy with whatever comes to hand, always. (The […]
There’s been an interesting discussion over at Bill Vallicella’s Maverick Philosopher website about the Constitution’s prohibition, in Article VI, of a “religious test” for public office. The discussion, with an anonymous Canadian philosopher (although, as was said once of Newton, “we recognize the lion by his claw”), spans several posts. In the first post in […]
April 27, 2018 – 11:15 am
I’ll be driving all day today, but before I go I want to pass along this long report by Representative Louis Gohmert on the character and professional history of Robert Mueller. (A hat-tip to our e-pal Bill Keezer for this.) Caveat lector: I haven’t had time to read it all myself yet, or to vet […]
Here are three takes on the Michael Cohen raid, and the Mueller probe generally: by DiploMad, Alan Dershowitz, and Dymphna.
According to this report, the Obama administration suspended the mechanism whereby employers are notified that the Social Security numbers used by their employees don’t match the employees’ names. This sensible cross-checking had been used to catch both fraud and clerical errors, and had prevented millions of citizens from losing Social Security benefits they were entitled […]
Here’s a response, by Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer [cue ad-hominem attack in comment thread in 3…2…1…], to Hillary Clinton’s insulting remarks the other day about winning the “dynamic” states, and losing the backward ones. I will confess that I hesitated before mentioning That Woman’s name in print. As Richard Wagner is said to have […]
I’ve been unable to turn on the news over the past 24 hours without immediately hearing about yesterday’s protests against “gun violence”. The news agencies have clearly learned a trick or two from their show-biz colleagues who call themselves “illusionists”: if these protests were about “violence”, the marchers would surely have something to say about […]
We’ve been hearing a lot about the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data-mining story, in which personal information about Facebook users was scooped up by a firm working for the Trump campaign. The media have been all over it. It’s been terrible PR for Facebook, and the company’s stock has dropped sharply. The media response was not, however, […]
March 20, 2018 – 12:00 pm
An addendum to yesterday’s “reactionary roundup“: In the Radio Derb podcast linked to in the post, Mr. Derbyshire reported on the detention and deportation of several identitarian dissidents who had come to England to express their views at Hyde Park’s famous Speakers Corner. One was a young Austrian by the name of Martin Sellner. Mr. […]
Nobody has brought more clarity to reporting on the tempest of scandals and investigations flooding the political landscape than National Review‘s Andrew McCarthy. As the federal prosecutor who handled the case against the “Blind Sheik” Omar Adbel Rahman for the 1993 Word Trade center bombing, he brings expertise and authority to a topic that would […]
Writing at the Federalist, Molly Hemingway gives us the latest on the DOJ’s skulduggery in the Trump investigation: a personal relationship between FBI agent Peter Strzok and the FISA-court judge Rudy Contreras, who mysteriously recused himself was recused after taking Mike Flynn’s guilty plea. Ms. Hemingway’s story, which is based on newly obtained text messages […]
In the comment-thread to our previous post, we see in microcosm the tremendous fissure in American culture and politics. It goes far deeper than mere disagreements about policy; it has reached the point in which the two sides have entirely different conceptions of moral, political, cultural, social, historical, and even human reality — views that […]
March 15, 2018 – 10:10 pm
We’ve been treated in recent days to the spectacle of schoolchildren marching in the streets to demand legislative restrictions on gun acquisition and ownership. This sort of thing is nothing new; I remember my own adolescence, in the late 60’s and early 70’s, and the student protests of that era. When you’re that age, it’s […]
Here’s an interesting item: politics and geology. It’s a reminder also of how much warmer the Earth once was, long before your SUV ruined everything.
If you’re familiar with Patrick Buchanan, you won’t be surprised to know that his latest column is a ringing defense of tariffs. An excerpt: “Trade wars are not won, only lost,’ warns Sen. Jeff Flake. But this is ahistorical nonsense. The U.S. relied on tariffs to convert from an agricultural economy in 1800 to the […]
In a recent post I declined to comment on the proposed imposition of new tariffs, pleading ignorance of the subject. The uncommonly astute blogger calling himself “ZMan”, however, has a definite opinion. An excerpt: The fact is, the current trade regime ushered in after the Cold War, has proven to be the boondoggle critics like […]
A foreground item in the news in these last days has been President Trump’s announcement of tariffs on various goods. As with everything else he says or does, (or, for that matter, anything that any prominent person says or does these days), there has been pugnacious disagreement. I’m not going to comment on this one. […]
February 27, 2018 – 3:29 pm
Our reader, the indefatigable JK, has sent along a column by David French about “gun-violence restraining orders”, or GVROs. Mr. French argues that they are a plausible compromise between the community’s collective interest and the individual right guaranteed (not “granted”, mind you!) by the Second Amendment. Mr. French outlines some limitations that would, in his […]
February 22, 2018 – 1:03 pm
Last night CNN put on a televised “Town Hall” meeting on guns. I didn’t watch it, but from what I’ve heard my impression was that it was neither civil nor productive. (Astonishing, I know.) Charles Cooke comments on it, here. He calls it a “disaster for our discourse”. All comity and presumption of goodwill is […]
February 20, 2018 – 11:39 am
Here’s a article that asks the question: if Russian trolls are indictable for election-meddling as unregistered foreign agents, why not Christopher Steele? Why not, as criminal co-conspirators, Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie, the DNC, and the Clinton campaign?
February 19, 2018 – 8:20 pm
For those who would ban all guns in private hands — and I know many of you personally — some Q & A: What are arms for? They are power multipliers. Who has arms has power over those who do not. What does it mean to be sovereign? What is it that distinguishes the sovereign […]
February 18, 2018 – 7:42 pm
Nobody has written with more clarity on the web of intrigue surrounding Russia, the FISA court, the Mueller probe, election-tampering, possible abuses of power by the Obama-era FBI, DOJ, and IRS, and alleged “collusion” than the former Federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy. His latest column explores, with lucidity and detail, the difference between a criminal investigation […]
February 8, 2018 – 7:14 pm
Back in late November of 2016, the New York Times lamented, in its smugly named “Interpreter” column, that democracy was suddenly in danger around the world. (What might have happened around then that would have put them is such a frame of mind? I feel as if I’m forgetting something…) They called upon two boyish […]
February 7, 2018 – 2:09 pm
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has just released an interim report on its investigation into the skulduggery surrounding the Clinton email server. For your convenience, I’ve saved a copy here.
February 6, 2018 – 1:15 pm
Yesterday’s post was a look at the tension and strife afflicting present-day America. In a comment, reader ‘Magus’ said: Obligatory libertarian quote: if the Constitution/US political framework set up by founders was unable to prevent the current state of affairs it was either complicit in it or failed to stop it. Either way, it was […]
February 5, 2018 – 3:56 pm
It is hardly possible to be a sentient being in the United States without observing that we are engaged an a great struggle for power. Politics always involves such wrangling, and of course our system of government was designed with that in mind, but in these last decades several trends, moving in one direction only, […]
February 2, 2018 – 10:39 pm
So, the Memo’s been published. “The mountain has labored, and brought forth a mouse.” Sure, there are damning things in it — notably that the FISA petitioners at the FBI and DOJ knew the Steele dossier to have been a highly questionable political hack-job, paid for by the DNC and the Clinton campaign (pardon the […]
February 1, 2018 – 11:00 pm
Tonight, all eyes are on the Nunes memo, which seems likely to be released tomorrow. But amid all the smoke and noise, various parties around the Internet have noticed that there may be other things afoot: It was reported today that the Mueller team has announced that the sentencing of Mike Flynn has been “postponed”, […]
January 31, 2018 – 11:21 pm
Everyone’s abuzz about last night’s State of the Union address, and I’ll say that I enjoyed it quite a bit myself: it was an hour-and-a-half long trolling of the Democrats in a way that was at least eight years overdue. Their discomfiture was so acute that they lost all concern for the political optics of […]
January 22, 2018 – 6:57 pm
Well! It appears the shutdown’s over. (Somehow, the nation survived.) It would take real determination not to see this as a political win for Donald Trump, and a black eye for Chuck Schumer. As we noted on Friday, the Democrats had three separate chances to make a deal, and there was never anything in the […]
January 19, 2018 – 3:50 pm
Well, another government shutdown looms. The Democrats are refusing to sign on to a budget resolution, because it doesn’t include a “clean” DREAM act. Over at Hot Air, “Allahpundit” explains: Let’s run through this again, because job one for Schumer and Pelosi over the next 24 hours will be to muddy waters that are actually […]
January 16, 2018 – 2:28 pm
Here’s another from VDH: President Nobama. Hardly a day goes by without some reminder of what a miraculous stroke of fortune it was, in what Professor Hanson calls “the lateness of the national hour”, that Hillary Clinton lost that election.
January 16, 2018 – 11:08 am
Good piece today by Victor Davis Hanson on how an antagonistic news network might have treated the declining Franklin D. Roosevelt. Here.
January 8, 2018 – 6:50 pm
We’ve just had an interesting conversation over at Bill Vallicella’s place. Bill proposed that subversive political parties be excluded from participation, and we went from there to a discussion of the relative merits of democracy itself. (Over the last decade or so I have become deeply skeptical of democracy — which is, after all, just […]
January 4, 2018 – 9:11 pm
I see in the news that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is looking to change the DOJ’s lax policy regarding enforcement of marijuana laws. I think he’s right to do so. To put my own cards on the table: I’d like to see pot legalized. I think it’s a silly thing to criminalize, and its illegality […]
January 2, 2018 – 12:59 pm
As we begin the new year, Lewis Amselem, a.k.a. “Diplomad” has some comments on “The Year of the Donald”, here. An excerpt: The resistance to Trump’s nomination and election started with prominent Republicans, such as Romney and the Bush clan, and continued with brave talk of riots in the street, “pussy hats,” vote recounts, electoral […]
December 20, 2017 – 4:10 pm
The tax-bill’s done. Not perfect, perhaps, but what is? Aside from its most important feature — lowering the corporate-tax rate — it repeals the Obamacare “individual mandate” (take that, Mr. Chief Justice!), and it makes room for further energy exploration in Alaska. Better still, it’s a major blow to Schumer, Pelosi, Warren, & Co. — […]
December 17, 2017 – 7:41 pm
Here’s a story you might not have heard: about a years-long operation against Hezbollah’s global criminal-syndicate apparatus, and how it was smothered by the Obama administration in the runup to the Iran deal. (From Politico, no less.) It’s long, but it deserves your attention.
December 15, 2017 – 12:44 pm
I haven’t commented much about the unholy mess that is the “collusion” investigation, but it is as tainted with obvious conflicts of interest, ulterior motives, double standards, foul play, abuse of power, dirty tricks, partisan cronyism, and good-old-fashioned political corruption as anything I’ve ever heard of in the history of the United States, which is […]
December 14, 2017 – 1:55 pm
Well, the Apocalypse is upon us: the FCC has voted to repeal the Obama-era “Net Neutrality” regulations. This means that the Internet we’ve all come to know and love is finished, over, kaput. The services you love — Google, for example, or perhaps some crotchety old geezer’s curiously named and depressing blog — will henceforward […]
December 3, 2017 – 5:39 pm
Here’s an informative piece on the Flynn affair by Tyler Durden. Key point: the purpose of the interrogation of General Flynn by the FBI was never to determine the content of Flynn’s conversations with the Russians — because the FBI already had the transcripts. I will add: just how did the FBI have these transcripts […]
December 3, 2017 – 2:17 pm
By now you’ve all heard all about the suspension of ABC News reporter Brian Ross for his story on Friday claiming that General Mike Flynn had copped a plea for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia. Ross initially reported that, during the campaign, Donald Trump had told Flynn to arrange meetings with […]
November 22, 2017 – 12:06 pm
Here’s a timeline of the Uranium One caper. (Caveat lector: I haven’t independently confirmed every detail, but it seems about right.) See also Andrew McCarthy’s summary here, and his discussion with John Batchelor, here.
November 16, 2017 – 11:21 pm
Well! No sooner do I write about how Bill Clinton seems to be gliding smoothly across the surface of our latest moral panic, than prominent Democrats seem suddenly to notice that the man is in fact, as so many of his victims had been trying to tell everyone for decades, a loathsome sexual predator. I […]
November 14, 2017 – 4:13 pm
Over at American Greatness, Roger Kimball explains why he’s given up on Trumpism.