Why don’t intelligent people give up on politics? Maybe for the same reason drunks don’t give up on drinking. Power is seductive. In a democracy, everyone thinks he can have a share of it. The conservative movement got rolling a generation ago when people like me saw our chance to rule through the Republican Party,... Read More

Another media typhoon: “Metro Board Member Fired for Comment on Gays.” I’m glad I don’t have to unpack that headline for Grandpa Sobran, who went to his reward in 1959, when the world was more or less normal. Today you may lose your job for using the word normal. Grandpa Sobran deserves to be remembered... Read More

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates said, probably after reading the morning papers. It never ceases to amaze me how passionately we all (I emphatically include myself) get caught up in the most trivial, ephemeral matters, like summer flies buzzing around the freshest dunghill. “How small this will appear a twelvemonth hence!” Samuel... Read More

Nearly every Christian, I suppose, has had the experience of being belabored by unbelievers about the putative sins of what is termed “organized religion” — the Spanish Inquisition, the trial of Galileo, the Salem witch-hunts, and so forth. What surprises me is that Christians have been so slow to turn the argument around and point... Read More

In 1993 I pretty much defied William F. Buckley Jr., my boss at National Review for 21 years, to fire me, and he did. I was sorry it had to end that way, but things had become very strained between us. I’ve told my side of that story before. What I’ve never told is what... Read More

Just when I was almost convinced that President Disastro had guaranteed Democratic gains in this year’s elections, and maybe in 2008 as well, I read Jeffrey Goldberg’s article on the Democrats’ strategies in The New Yorker. These guys are hopeless. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, insists that “this is a Democratic country,... Read More

Anatole France once observed, “The majestic equality of the law forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” I read that as a youth and have never forgotten it. France’s aphorism should be pondered with another — Bismarck’s, I think, though I... Read More

Who is the most wonderful man in the world? I’ve just learned the answer from the loveliest woman in the world, my baby daughter, Chris, who combines beauty and brains and — wait! I’m just getting started — a wonderful wit and charm and writing talent and the courage of a young lioness, along with... Read More

Stanley Kunitz, one of the most respected American poets of our time, has died at the age of 100. Until I read his obituary I didn’t know that his father had committed suicide six weeks before his birth. Touching detail. Poor man! Poor boy! What a thing to live with. And it surely had something... Read More

Our government has to protect us, and how it does so is none of our business. But now we luckily learn how the huge but shadowy National Security Agency does it, thanks to USA Today, which has done a bit of countersnooping in our behalf. Without informing us, and with the cooperation of three telecommunications... Read More

Back in 2000, candidate George W. Bush described himself as “a uniter, not a divider.” If we didn’t all remember that, you’d think I’d made it up. Now Bush has dubbed himself “the decider.” Well, things change, people change, and our perceptions of them change; but with Bush, everything has changed, and in the most... Read More

I don’t watch television much anymore, but I gather that Stephen Colbert is the hottest comedian on the tube this month. I missed his latest achievement, an act of lese majesty at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, where he ridiculed the chief guest, President Bush, without mercy. Bush and his wife had to take... Read More

“To bomb, or not to bomb?” asks the cover of the April 24 issue of The Weekly Standard, and if you know the magazine, you can guess the answer, provided by an editorial and two articles within. The United States must attack Iran soonest. The dithering of the Bush administration must cease. The mad mullahs... Read More

The Princeton historian Sean Wilentz has caused a stir by arguing, in Rolling Stone magazine, that George W. Bush may be the worst president in American history. Of course you have to bear in mind that Wilentz, as a good liberal, ranks Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt among the greatest. Still, he has uttered a judgment... Read More

“Freedom of speech is the right to be wrong, basically. Sometimes I’m wrong.” These words were reportedly spoken by the historian David Irving in an interview from his Austrian prison, where he is doing time — years of his life — for “Holocaust denial.” Austria and a few other Western democracies still maintain the position... Read More

I can’t see our getting into a war with Iran — not while both countries are led by such cool, reasonable men. Of course at the moment both of them are snorting and pawing the earth with their forehooves a little; President Bush has indicated that he would be pleased with a little more regime... Read More

April 12 was Shakespeare’s birthday. The real Shakespeare, I mean: Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. I thought a little celebrating was in order, so I watched one of the best Shakespeare films ever made: Roman Polanski’s 1971 Macbeth. When I was a kid, that was one of my favorite plays. Still is. The language!... Read More

President Bush has brought character back to the White House. And how. He is so inner-directed that he doesn’t care what the polls say. Good thing, too. The latest Washington Post–ABC News poll says 60 per cent of respondents give him a negative rating, while 38 per cent think he’s doing a darn good job.... Read More

The lead story on the front page of the New York Times on April 6, for once, wasn’t political. It was about fossils. “All the news that’s fit to print,” eh? But why fossils on the front page, overshadowing immigration, war, and even Katie Couric? Doesn’t that belong in the Science section on Tuesday? Or... Read More

When President Bush confirmed that he’d authorized the National Security Agency to conduct an enormous secret program to monitor Americans’ telephone calls, as reported in USA Today, I assumed that this remarkably unpopular president had finally taken a fatal step too far. Now the American public, already revolted by this administration’s blunders, crimes, lies, scandals,... Read More

Not again! Another top Republican “denies any wrongdoing,” but resigns his post. As the great American philosopher Jimmy Hatlo used to say, they’ll do it every time. Why does corruption in government always surprise us? Why do we expect anything else from it? Government is organized force. It takes our wealth and makes war. And... Read More

Things are getting messy. Before I address today’s headlines, let me offer my simple, comprehensive peace plan for the Middle East. First, give Palestine back to the Brits. Then adopt a reverse Monroe Doctrine: the United States will stay out of the Eastern Hemisphere. Think about it. Okay, now to today’s headlines. Abdul Rahman, the... Read More

In the 1979 movie The In-Laws, Peter Falk plays a dotty former CIA man who awes his sidekick, Alan Arkin, a timid dentist whose daughter is married to Falk’s son. “Were you involved in the Bay of Pigs operation?” asks the fascinated Arkin. Falk replies proudly, “Involved in it? It was my idea!” “Success has... Read More

President Bush says we are not only in a war of arms, but “a war of ideas.” And, as I understand it, he figures he’s just the man to lead the free world into intellectual combat. Apart from “democracy,” the president’s idée du jour is that our biggest challenge comes from Iran, whose current leader,... Read More

Quagmire? Did someone say quagmire? Not President Bush. He sees “real progress” in Iraq. This is no time to throw in the towel! Look at all those millions of purple fingers! Who says the Arabians aren’t ready for democracy? The real problem now is Iran, but they’re not really Arabians. As Condoleezza will tell you,... Read More