An Israel-Russia Alliance?

For some time now, I had been concerned that the growing urge of American elites toward bear-baiting"€”what I call World War G for its bizarre premise of resurrecting the Cold War over, of all things, gay marriage"€”was a bad habit. But as it turned out in Kiev, a street battle attracts a ...

Conservatism in Russia and America

Similarities and differences between Russian and American conservatism"€”especially in regard to the topic of the moment, Ukraine"€”can be observed in the thought of Russian geopolitical theorist Aleksandr Dugin, director of the Center for Conservative Studies at Moscow State University. ...

The Kremlin, Moscow

Nationalism Is a Blast

On this 100th anniversary of the Great War, the rise of anti-Russian jingoism in the American media is apparent to both the right and the left. In The Nation, NYU Russian Studies professor Stephen F. Cohen lamented about the press’s run-up to the Sochi Winter Games: American media on Russia ...

The River Rhine

The Borders of Empire

I was wondering why Russia chose to hold its Winter Olympics in the Black Sea beach resort of Sochi, which is almost as far south as you can get in that notoriously northern land. And that got me thinking about borders in general. African governments are always complaining that they inherited ...

World War III

With the 100th anniversary of World War I upcoming and old enmities between America and Russia resurging in contemporary form"€”for example, Glenn Beck recently said, “I will stand with GLAAD against...hetero-fascism” in Russia"€”due to the approach of that gayest of sporting ...

Mitt Romney

Minorities Rising

Amy Chua, the Chinese Mom America Loves to Hate, follows up her 2011 bestseller The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother with a new book coauthored with her more laid-back husband and fellow Yale Law School professor Jed Rubenfeld: The Triple Package: Why Groups Rise and Fall in America. Their essential ...

Fallon Fox

World War T

As the gay-marriage juggernaut crushes all resistance within America, it’s become obvious that the mainstream media doesn’t want to declare victory and go home. They want sequels. But what’s left to exploit in demonizing average people after the elites have gotten all they ...

Her: A Two-Hour Put-On?

When writer-director Spike Jonze won a Best Screenplay Golden Globe this week for Her, his little science-fiction fable about Joaquin Phoenix falling in love with his Siri-like smartphone (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), he apologized for his acceptance speech by noting, "€œI’m bad at ...

White Food

In 2002, on the tenth anniversary of the Rodney King riots, I drove down to the intersection of Florence and Normandie in South-Central LA where all hell had broken loose. To see if the locals were suffering from a “food desert,” I stopped at a nearby supermarket. Yet the main ...

Fethullah Gülen

The Shadowy Imam of the Poconos

As 2014 dawns, the world continues to keep me furnished with material. For example, the current political shakeup in Turkey turns out to be a mashup of various obsessions and hobbyhorses of mine, such as byzantine conspiracy theories, test prep, the naiveté of American education reform, ...