Columns, pieces and posts
America so often gets Iran wrong. We didn’t know when the shah was going to fall, didn’t foresee the massive wave that would topple him, didn’t know the 1979 revolution would move violently against American citizens, didn’t know how to handle the hostage-taking. Last week we didn’t know a mass rebellion was coming, and this […]
In America almost everybody has a base, not only political parties. Businesses do, and public figures, and Web sites. We attempt to quantify to the nth degree everybody’s numbers, ratings, page views. These tell us how big a base is and, roughly, who is in it. “The base” is a great if largely unspoken preoccupation […]
“You are there.” The rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, that great, sandstone-walled, light-filled hall ringed with statues of the great of American history—Jefferson, Washington, proud Andrew Jackson in his flowing cape, Eisenhower, U.S. Grant, his eyes surveying the terrain as if he sees something out there in the wilderness. It’s 11 a.m. Wednesday, June 3, […]
“Let’s play grown-up.” When I was a child, that’s what we said when we ran out of things to do like playing potsie or throwing rocks in the vacant lot. You’d go in and take your father’s hat and your mother’s purse and walk around saying, “Would you like tea?” In retrospect we weren’t imitating […]
More than most nations, America has been, from its start, a hero-loving place. Maybe part of the reason is that at our founding we were a Protestant nation and not a Catholic one, and so we made “saints” of civil and political figures. George Washington was our first national hero, known everywhere, famous to children. […]
The indecipherable language of government has actually become dangerous to the well-being of the nation. As the federal government claims ever greater powers, its language has become vague to the point of meaningless and meaningless to the point of menacing. The other day I was watching “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, and Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary […]
When word came of his death, I was literally planning the particulars of a trip to Washington for the inaugural conference of Pepperdine University’s Jack F. Kemp Institute for Political Economy. Jack’s papers will be there, and a chair in his name dedicated to the teaching of economics. This is good. Much has been said […]
President Obama’s news conference Wednesday night was a bit of a masterpiece. The Obama Thinking Look was back, as he parsed questions, took notes, and offered up rehearsed answers in a way that made them seem not written by the Committee on Soundbites but natural to him, as if he were formulating answers in the […]
What makes it hard at the moment to write sympathetically of Barack Obama is the loud chorus of approbation arising from his supporters in journalism as they mark the hundred days. Drudge calls it the “Best President Ever” campaign. It is marked by an abandonment of critical thinking among otherwise thoughtful men and women who […]
A small sign of the times: USA Today this week ran an article about a Michigan family that, under financial pressure, decided to give up credit cards, satellite television, high-tech toys and restaurant dining, to live on a 40-acre farm and become more self-sufficient. The Wojtowicz family—36-year-old Patrick, his wife Melissa, 37, and their 15-year-old […]