Franklin D. Roosevelt

Did FDR Engineer Pearl Harbor?

As a history buff, I have tried to come to terms with the “surprise” Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. That lugubrious anniversary"€”December 7th"€”is fast approaching. For its impact upon American history, ...

St. Petersburg, Russia

David, Goliath, and Uncle Sam

If Western universities were not brimming with leftist professors, the present situation in Ukraine would surprise no one. History would have taught us that the complete destruction of Nazi Germany was bound to clear the ...

Thanks, Jurors! You’re Safe Now. We Aren’t

To watch the hours of celebratory fist-pumping from government officials and black activists after the guilty verdicts against police officer Derek Chauvin this week, you'd think Minnesota had just won the NCAA ...

Muslim Brotherhood: Bummers of the Revolution

It seemed like only a few days ago that Egypt's humble peasant masses set hearts ablaze worldwide with their spirited defense of universal rights and basic human dignity. The planet rejoiced as it witnessed a spontaneous ...

Vilfredo Pareto

My Dinner With Vilfredo Pareto

My list of historical personages I"€™d invite to a dinner party doesn’t include any of the obvious choices. Who really wants to eat dinner with Genghis Khan or Julius Caesar? They’d probably make beetle brows ...

The Mormons Go Mainstream!

America's Great Weird Religion hit Manhattan's Great White Way last Thursday night as South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone premiered their musical The Book of Mormon to rapturously rhapsodic rave reviews. The ...

Oliver Stone: Older, Wiser, and Worse

A cinematic development I hadn"€™t expected is Oliver Stone evolving into a director who makes movies that are fair, responsible, and forgettable. His sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, with Michael Douglas returning ...

The One Certain Victor in the Pandemic War

"War is the health of the state," wrote the progressive Randolph Bourne during the First World War, after which he succumbed to the Spanish flu. America's war on the coronavirus pandemic promises to be no exception to the ...

Political Society v. Civil Society

The latest flap over a Benetton ad campaign is far from the first in that notoriously tasteless company’s history. Obama is shown kissing the President of China, French chief of State Nicolas Sarkozy liplocks with ...

Right to Bare Arms

Once something is claimed as a right, it enters a different metaphysical plane from all other claims or considerations. It becomes untouchable, immune from derogation, exception, limitation, curtailment, or qualification. ...

Vladimir Putin

Did We Provoke Putin’s War in Ukraine?

When Russia's Vladimir Putin demanded that the U.S. rule out Ukraine as a future member of the NATO alliance, the U.S. archly replied: NATO has an open-door policy. Any nation, including Ukraine, may apply for membership ...

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall

Defaming the Irish: If the Shoe Fits, Drink From It

Quickly lost among the other manufactured controversies earlier this month was a call among Irish American groups to boycott Urban Outfitters. The clothing chain's sin was to unveil a line of St. Patrick’s Day ...

The Coronavirus Reveals Our Lack of Social Trust

If you’ve been to a supermarket recently, you’ve probably noticed how quickly people are buying up toilet paper, hand soap, dry goods, meats, and other necessities. More interesting, and disturbing, though, has been the ...

Sanaa, Yemen

Saudi Thugs and Book Plugs

After the heat in Greece, the Alps are cool and green and very comfortable. My sensei Richard Amos is over here, and we squeezed two weeks of intensive karate training into three days. Nothing makes me feel better than the ...

How Middle America Is to Be Dispossessed

In all but one of the last seven presidential elections, Republicans lost the popular vote. George W. Bush and Donald Trump won only by capturing narrow majorities in the Electoral College. Hence the grand strategy of ...

The Great American Pill Party

A report released Wednesday says that in 2010, one in five Americans took medication to relieve conditions broadly described as mental disorders. Such medications include antidepressants, anti-anxiety pills, pills for ...

Katharine Hepburn and the Tomboys Who Followed

It’s hard to open a fashion magazine or celebrity rag this year without reading tomboy-this or boyfriend cut-that. Twenty years ago, however, or even five, the word tomboy, both as a noun and an adjective, ...

My Draft DeSantis Presidential Announcement Speech

With Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis busy running the third-largest state, enacting a magnificently conservative agenda, promoting a new book, and having to respond to endless demands that he run for president (not to mention ...

Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing. By William Blake, c. 1786. Tate Britain.

Ban the Bard!

A creative writing course at a British university has withdrawn graduation requirement that students should attempt a sonnet, not on the reasonable grounds that it is futile to try to turn people with cloth ears for ...

The Parking Garage of the Fates

"€œOf all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine"€: so uttered a distraught and heartbroken Humphrey Bogart in the iconic Casablanca. It's one of the film's many lines that get to the ...

The Once and Future Art of the Cigar

My eponymous father always kept cigars. I remember when I first stole one. I had drained myself at the thought of the new Filipina maid—it was that time of life, before I’d embarked on the more wholesome business of ...

Serena Williams

Nike and the Phantom Bigots

If you watched the 2019 Oscars, a spellbinding Nike commercial entitled “Dream Crazier” might have caught your eye. The commercial began with a compelling score, gripping B-roll, and motivating narration from tennis ...

The Fallacy of the Real Me

According to a Gallup poll, the percentage of the American population that now “identifies” as LGBTQ+ has doubled by comparison with ten years ago, and now stands at 7.1 percent. Among the youngest cohort polled, it was ...

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The Multicultural Cringe

This week’s storm in a teacup was when Chinese pianist Lang Lang played the Chinese song “My Motherland” at a US state dinner for visiting Chinese functionaries. The song is a gushy old patriotic ...


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