I maintain some vestigial links to the old country. Among them is the inclusion of the London Daily Telegraph in my morning trawl through the online news. It’s sheer sentimentality on my part. The Telegraph was one of the first major outlets to publish me, back in the 1980s. At that time it was a... Read More

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. As in days of old, business and political elites are gathering in treason to give amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, for reasons various and malign: to keep down wages (businessmen), to enlist new voters (Democrats), and from sheer delusional stupidity (Republicans). Once again it will... Read More

If you hang out at dissident-right websites much you surely know the Berthold Brecht quote: "Would it not be easier … for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?" This is offered on those websites — I mean to say, of course, on those shameful, disgraceful websites that no decent-minded person would even... Read More

Along with wellnigh every other blogger on the internet, I posted to NRO's The Corner about the lady who asked Barack Obama, in a TV-link to-and-fro, why the government is issuing and extending H-1B visas — that is, guest worker visas for any occupation "which requires the theoretical and practical application of a body of... Read More

The other evening one of my dinner clubs had a meeting. I'm getting addicted to these clubs — I now belong to three of them. This one is conservative-dissident. By "conservative" I mean skeptical of social change, and especially skeptical of vast social-engineering experiments — the normalization of buggery and bastardy, mass immigration from populations... Read More

A couple of hard luck stories here to begin with. First story: Randy Johnson of Marion, Indiana was laid off from his job at a paper products company in 1995 along with 200 other employees. The company had been purchased by Bain Capital six months previously. Mitt Romney was a principal of Bain Capital at... Read More

If I hear Ron Paul referred to as the GOP's "crazy uncle" one more time, I may go a little wackadoo myself. Ron's about 80 percent good sense and no more than 20 percent crazy. I'm OK with that. I like Ron; and 80-20 is not bad for a politician. The 20 percent of craziness... Read More

I quipped in a TakiMag column a few months ago that the Pacific island nation of Niue may be the first country in the world to be completely emptied out by emigration. As you were. I have a new candidate for the title: Somalia. The current population of Somalia is listed as 9.9 million, but... Read More

Americans are nice people. We are generous and open-hearted. Our nation is big and lush, and most of it is empty. (Our mean population density of 83 per square mile ranks us number 179 out of 240 on this list. Ireland is twice as dense; Turkey, three times; Bangladesh, thirty-five times.) The most cherished of... Read More

There was a good crowd at New York University Tuesday evening for the Intelligence Squared debate. These are full-dress formal debates on topics of public interest, held roughly once a month through the season, very professionally organized, broadcast on Bloomberg TV and NPR. Tuesday's topic was "Don't give us your tired, your poor, your huddled... Read More

Get yer hankies out. Here is the tale of little Emily Ruiz, four years old, the victim, according to her attorney, of "a tragic injustice." Little Emily is the daughter of Leonel and Brenda Ruiz, illegal immigrants from Guatemala who live in Brentwood, Long Island. She has a brother, Christopher, one year younger. Both children... Read More

The world beyond our shores seems to be entering a zone of instability. Five years from now we may be looking back nostalgically at the decades 1980-2010 as an age of blessed tranquility when unsightly but skillful autocrats like Mubarak (Egypt), Gaddafi (Libya), Ben Ali (Tunisia), Saleh (Yemen), and the monarchs of the Gulf kept... Read More

Psychologists tell us that one key characteristic of a mentally healthy, well-adjusted adult is a sense of control. Whether we actually possess free will or not can be left to the neuroscientists who study brain processes. The current consensus seems to be: No, we don't have free will, but we do have free won't. (Compare... Read More

Strange things are happening. In the stifled, constipated political discourse of the modern West, there are quite wide categories of facts that are rather obviously true, but which it has for decades been considered gross bad manners to mention aloud. Now, suddenly, we are seeing those facts printed in respectable organs of news and opinion.... Read More

This Tuesday evening I attended a function arranged by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Dr. Stephen Steinlight gave us a lucid and witty address on "Exploring Jewish Attitudes towards Immigration." The address was a condensed version of a fine long piece Dr. Steinlight wrote up for the CIS last year, which you can read... Read More

In his New York Times column (November 23, 2007), “conservative” commentator David Brooks complains that his favorite political figure has gone over to the dark forces of the “anti-immigrant movement.” Brooks recalls those happier days when Rudy, in an address at the Kennedy School of Government in October 1996, recognized that xenophobia had overwhelmed his... Read More