October 23, 2023

Notes on a forgettable Oval Office address

There has been no shortage of commentary on President Biden's recent Ukraine/Israel funding appeal, delivered as a prime-time address from the Oval Office. The speech had an oddly slapped together feel, and it has been subsequently acknowledged t...

May 14, 2023

Daydreaming the Guns Away

We find ourselves living in a highly consequential time for the legal clarification of the 2nd Amendment. Extremely aggressive, wide-ranging bans of semi-automatic firearms have been enacted in various parts of the country, drawing legal challenges. ...

February 22, 2023

Gun Banning and Social Contempt

In attempting to make sense of things, one should always look to the insights of the wise and the experienced. But one should also heed the occasional ill-considered outbursts of loud-mouthed idiots, since these too can be quite enlightening. A ranti...

January 25, 2023

Antagonizing the Scapegoats

The political climate cultivated by 15th-century Florentine humanists stands in stark contrast to that foisted upon us by progressives. Inspired by the newly recovered liberal arts of classical antiquity, the humanists sought to promote civic virtue ...

August 17, 2022

From Civil Compromise to Partisan Persecution

Any consumer of political news and commentary is well advised to bear in mind that even the most trusted of broadcasters has a commercial interest in sensationalizing policy differences and portraying their ideological opponents as cartoonishly devio...

June 16, 2022

The unbearable lightness of Geraldo

In the wake of Uvalde, Geraldo Rivera advocates prohibiting the purchase of semi-automatic firearms by anyone under age 21.  The proposal warrants skepticism.  Given the defenselessness of the victims and the brutality of the kill...

June 7, 2022

A Demagogue Lashes Out

With his presidency in a steep, self-inflicted decline, Joe Biden has evidently decided the best way to revive his fading political fortunes is to blame half the country for garish episodes of nihilistic criminal violence as he crouches like a leerin...

May 31, 2022

From Senseless Trauma to Predictable Hackery

As revolting a spectacle as it was, it was scarcely surprising (considering the source) that in the immediate aftermath of the horrific killings at Uvalde, the "President" hobbled to a microphone to rehash stale partisan lies designed to de...

May 18, 2022

Hating the West

Douglas Murray's The War on the West chronicles the gradual emergence and sudden rise to dominance of the pseudo-intellectual anti-white racism that now saturates our culture. No longer confined to the fringes, this bigotry has been lent consider...

April 1, 2022

What is Capitalism?

A certain congressional airhead (AOC) recently whispered “Most people don’t really know what capitalism is; most people don’t even know what socialism is” and we are compelled to agree -- most people don’t know what thes...

November 20, 2021

Tragedy as Antidote to Wokism

Edgar Wright's film Last Night in Soho is a profound cinematic experience. Wright and his cowriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns describe their film as a lesson on the dangers of nostalgia, but the film does far more than prompt a skeptical reassessment o...

October 16, 2021

The Popularization of Political Repression

If social media material is any indication, the sheer ugliness of American political sentiment is increasing exponentially, and the ugliness is getting harder and harder to tune out. To the extent that its inner character shines through on the intern...

October 2, 2021

The Fragility of Political Sanity

The classical liberal tradition that inspired America's founding is rooted in a deeper Enlightenment tradition that rose in principled opposition to religious conflict in Reformation Europe. This earlier Enlightenment fostered a secular political...

September 1, 2021

Islamism Triumphant

The catastrophic implications of the incompetent U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan are difficult to exaggerate. The effects of this debacle are apt to reverberate well beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this, for there can be no doubt that this per...

August 4, 2021

Lenin's Legacy of Hatred

It is sobering to recognize how many crimes against humanity first recommended themselves as admirable courses of action prompted by the benignly framed ideological obsessions of activist intellectuals. It would seem that there is nothing inherently ...

July 27, 2021

Embarrassing the Predatory Left

The predatory, tyrannical Left typically seeks to establish its moral authority by portraying its quest for power as a defense of disadvantaged constituencies. Unfortunately for the leftist, the constituencies they claim to defend often include membe...

July 9, 2021

Tyrannizing the Marketplace of Ideas

Inasmuch as we Americans are heirs to the Enlightenment, we are inclined to see in the exchange of viewpoints and their public debate a sign of political health. We should recognize, however, that such openness to alternatives is by no means a typica...

June 29, 2021

Weimar Turmoil and Racial Incitement

Joseph Goebbels faced a significant challenge when he accepted a prominent party posting in Berlin in October of 1926. While the Nazi party had some strength in the south and north of Germany, it had virtually no support in the capital, where the Soc...