Columns, pieces and posts
Practical advice from one Charles Dickens in “Sketches by Boz”: “Reflect upon your present blessings—of which every man has many—not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” G.K. Chesterton took a different tack—gratitude is “the highest form of thought.” Tolstoy took it a step further: You can infer from his work that […]
We are thinking still about Jeffrey Epstein. I first wrote of him in these pages days after his death on Aug. 10, 2019. Why does his story have such a hold on America’s consciousness? To state the obvious, it is a moral horror show. From the federal indictment released on his arrest on sex-trafficking charges […]
Earlier this week everyone piled on congressional Democrats, or furiously defended them, over the government shutdown and its end. It was the longest in U.S. history, 43 days, and utterly pointless. When it was called I thought of Albert Brooks in “Broadcast News,” who asked, of a different predicament, “Does anybody ever win one of […]
What happened Tuesday is serious and big, but I start in a roundabout way. Throughout the 20th century it was the general way in American politics that when you made a lurch—1932 was a lurch left, from the presidency on down, 1980 a lurch right—you stuck with the lurch a while until you moved on, […]
Only five years ago, in the first autumn of the pandemic, the big question was whether New York was over, finished. It was a real debate. The threatened collapse of commercial real estate, the rise of remote work and the growing knowledge you didn’t really have to be here to be at the top of […]
Donald Trump’s supporters are feeling satisfaction after two astonishing achievements: He is the first president this century to establish order on the southern border, and he has secured some new possibility for a Mideast settlement. These are breakthroughs even if they don’t last. But the people in this White House, with every triumph, become wilder […]
Give it to him. Give him your applause. Sometimes pessimism reaches a point of moral error. Sometimes hope is the only realistic approach. So give it to President Trump, whose White House has produced the first progress in the Mideast since the grave crisis of Oct. 7 began. He announced Wednesday with typically Trumpian words. […]
A lot of people in the Trump administration think this is their moment and America’s last chance. They know what time it is, you don’t, it’s later in the game than you think, the damage is great and right now is the final hope of constructive national change. A sense of urgency is their central […]
While watching the Charlie Kirk memorial Sunday, I was swept by a memory that yielded a realization. The memorial, in State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., has been well described. There was a height to it, and a gentleness, with a few rhetorical exceptions. More than 90,000 people attended. TV and online viewership is estimated […]
The broader subject here is getting through times of national trauma, and I’m thinking mostly of parents and young people. I have my mind on three truths. They are about personal as opposed to political behavior. • You are the gatekeeper. Our society can’t live without wise heads who set and maintain standards. In the […]