Columns, pieces and posts
I was writing a rather stern column about the mess in Washington, but I got kind of swept Thursday by the beautiful bipartisan tribute to Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, in Congress’s Statuary Hall, a ceremony held just before his burial back in Baltimore. I want to get beyond the merely sentimental. Everyone seems to have […]
Things are more fluid than they seem. That’s my impression of Washington right now. There’s something quiet going on, a mood shift. Impeachment of course will happen. The House will support whatever charges are ultimately introduced because most Democrats think the president is not fully sane and at least somewhat criminal. Also they’re Democrats and […]
One thing I think I’ve correctly observed about the U.S. military in the 21st century is that its leaders tend to be the last to want to go to war and the last to want to leave it. Political figures operate under public pressures and shifting geopolitical needs and goals; they’re surrounded by people who […]
We have grown used to the daily bedlam, the nonstop freak-out that is the Trump White House. Nevertheless it should be noted the president’s language and visage this week were especially wild. It’s “treason,” it’s “a coup,” it’s a “hoax” and a “fraud,” the whistleblower’s information came from “a leaker or a spy,” it’s a […]
Every time I imagine Elizabeth Warren debating Donald Trump, I picture him rumbling onto the stage like a big white bear—roaring “Grrr grrrr,” towering over her, paws flailing, claws extended. She’ll stand there looking up at him in the lights, and you’ll wonder if she’s trembling, cowering, because clearly she’s about to be crushed. And […]
Here are the reasons, in no certain order, that the accusations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh will never stop and his foes on the progressive left never let up. Because progressives have to prove they were right to advance the sexual-assault accusations of Christine Blasey Ford. They lost that battle; Justice Kavanaugh sits on the court. […]
“Everybody knows everything.” That mordant observation is the first of Burnham’s Laws. James Burnham was a significant mid-20th century figure, a public intellectual and political philosopher who started out on the left—as a young follower he carried on an extensive personal correspondence with Leon Trotsky —and became in time an eloquent foe of totalitarianism in […]
This is on the danger of pushing it too far. It is a delicate business knowing what the moment will allow. You can be right in intent and wrong on execution, and if you’re wrong on that it may not matter you were right in intent. A great woman in business and the arts once […]
We feel the coolness of the mornings now. The school year has begun. Students are entering or returning to colleges and universities with a busy buzz of hope and anticipation. The only way to begin any new endeavor is with a sense of excitement about life. In connection to that, Anthony Kronman has a bracing […]
8/22/2This week we turn the column over to Edith Wharton, (1862-1937), the great woman of letters and author of the Gilded Age novels “The Age of Innocence,” “The House of Mirth” and “The Custom of the Country.” She was the first American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. She was also named a […]