Columns, pieces and posts
Half a century ago William F. Buckley wrote a small gem of a book called “Cruising Speed,” about a single action-packed week in his life as an editor and writer. I’ve just had a Buckley-like week—at Purdue University in Indiana to speak with students, then back to New York to interview Henry Kissinger for the […]
Public pronouncements aren’t commensurate with the gravity of the Ukraine situation. They’ve gotten too informal, off-the-cuff and shallow. Russia continues its missile barrage against Ukrainian cities. The Crimean bridge was daringly taken out, delivering Vladimir Putin a real blow, and within hours Ukraine was tauntingly unveiling a postage stamp depicting the ruined span. The Nord […]
If you have been observing the Georgia U.S. Senate campaign closely and you are unusually straightforward and eloquent you would say of Herschel Walker what John Ellis said Wednesday in his newsletter: “Walker shouldn’t be a candidate for the United States Senate. He’s not qualified. He won’t know what to do when (and if) he […]
In October it will be 60 years since the Cuban missile crisis, which has been called the most dangerous crisis in recorded history. The Soviet Union had secretly placed missiles in a base in Cuba; the U.S. discovered them through secret aerial photographs. What would President John F. Kennedy do, less than two years into […]
Vladimir Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine must be received soberly, if for no other reason than that leaders occasionally do what they say they’ll do. There are reasons beyond that. He has lost hardware, soldiers, ground and face. He is cornered and escalating, increasing the odds of mistake and miscalculation. Great care […]
“For the British people, Victoria was more than an individual, more even than the queen,” Robert K. Massie wrote in “Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War.” “She was—and had been as long as most of them could remember—a part of the fabric of their lives. She embodied history, tradition, government, and […]
London I am not sentimental about the special relationship between the U.S. and Britain but fully support it. Nations have to look out for their own interests, but in a dangerous world you keep old friends close. We came from them: The Magna Carta flowed into our Declaration, the English and Scottish Enlightenments helped form […]
I found myself unshocked by the abortion vote in Kansas, and I don’t understand the shock of others. America has come to poll consistently in favor of abortion in the first trimester with support declining in the second and cratering in the third. The people of Kansas were asked if they’d like to remove any […]
Where are we in the office wars? I think there’s an armistice between the return-to-the-office side and the work-from-home forces. Perhaps hostilities will resume in the fall. Bosses are hoping the old reality will snap back as the drama of 2020-22 recedes, that people will start to feel they need to come back, or can […]
We’re in the midst of breath-catching revolutions in how America lives and works. Working from home, as an issue, is still shaking itself out, but its implications are huge. If an entire class of people who used to go to the office stay home, it will upend the commuter model on which modern cities are […]