Editor’s note: A version of this article first appeared at Ricochet.com. In an effort to squeegee politics out of my life for a long weekend, I recently attended several sporting events that highlighted my granddaughters’ skills in soccer and swimming. … Continue reading
Marvin J. Folkertsma
How to Make America’s Elites More Responsible
Observing Hollywood’s posturing poseurs deliver their goods at the Oscars, as they ooze self-righteousness and narcissism, triggers a pesky thought that no doubt erupts in the minds of normal people. That is, few of those luminaries strutting across the stage … Continue reading
A “What If” Memorial Day
The news could not have been worse. Starvation, malnutrition, diseases such as typhoid, smallpox, dysentery, and pneumonia, along with freezing temperatures that assaulted thousands of shoeless feet bloodying the snow, attached to bands of “walking skeletons” exposed to the elements … Continue reading
Trumpism and Elitism
In “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Albert Camus’s exploration of the role of suicide in the modern world, the philosopher of the Absurd states, “That universal reason, practical or ethical, that determinism, those categories that explain everything are enough to make … Continue reading
Tracking America’s Suicide
Amidst a plethora of sensational news reports elbowing each other to seize first place in America’s national consciousness, there is a story that has lurked beneath media radar that teaches us much more about the status of our country than … Continue reading
Bernie Sanders’ America
The raucous welcomes and thundering applause that have greeted America’s newest (and oldest) political rock star, the septuagenarian Bernie Sanders, have launched a cottage industry of puzzled pundits trying to figure out the source of his appeal. Of course it’s … Continue reading
Dealing with barbarism: V-J Day and beyond
On September 2, 1945, V-J Day, the funeral-like solemnity of the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri was shattered by the thunder of 400 B-29 bombers flying overhead, accompanied by an additional 1,500 carrier aircraft. In a bay packed with … Continue reading
The Great War at 100: Revisiting The Guns Of August
On August 3, 1914, British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey gave a speech before Parliament that “proved to be one of those junctures by which people afterward date events,” according to Barbara Tuchman in her magisterial “The Guns of August.” The … Continue reading
President Obama’s Environmental Purity Agency
The rollout of the Environmental Protection Agency’s new draft regulation to limit greenhouse gases was accompanied by a brilliant political cartoon that showed a pair of hapless fellows with automobile mufflers protruding from their mouths, apparently to prevent any renegade … Continue reading
A Decent Respect: Renewing the Spirit of ‘76
July 4, 1776 gave birth to perhaps the most revolutionary political document in the history of civilization, submitted by men who proclaimed, “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, … Continue reading
V&V Flashback—Remembering the Significance of D-Day
Editor’s note: This piece first ran on our site on May 30, 2012. At 0227 hours on the morning of June 6, 1944, Lieutenant Robert Mathias saw the red light flash above the door of his C47 “Dakota” aircraft, signaling … Continue reading
American Politics as a Confidence Game
Reading post-2012-election news reports can be hazardous to one’s mental health, particularly for the sanity-challenged among us. But perhaps the singularly most prescient comments come from long ago—from the pen of America’s most profound novelist, Herman Melville, whose words in … Continue reading
The Decline and Fall of America
A few days after the election of 2012 the very talented Michael Ramirez published a political cartoon that perhaps conveyed a more profound meaning than he anticipated. He depicted a pair of hands extending from star-studded sleeves (presumably from a mendicant Uncle … Continue reading
Mitt Romney and the Politics of Virtue
When Mitt Romney blurted out his now notorious 47-percent lament, liberal gaffe-o-meters went ballistic, acting as though he were an American Ebenezer Scrooge who had just shoved Tiny Tim Cratchit into a ditch and then burned down a crutch factory. … Continue reading
President Obama’s Munich Moment
In September 1938 the British prime minister had a problem. The Third Reich’s psychopath-in-chief was scorching the airwaves in one of his trademark rants, this time about the supposed oppression of Germans living in Czechoslovakia. He threatened war unless Western … Continue reading
Remembering the Significance of VJ Day
Consider this fictitious scenario: In the summer of 1950, President Thomas E. Dewey faced a national security crisis of extraordinary proportions—one that his advisors agreed likely would define his presidency. After beating his Democratic opponent in 1948 by a comfortable … Continue reading
The Obama Nullification Doctrine
In December 1828, South Carolina had 5,000 copies of John C. Calhoun’s “Exposition and Protest” printed and distributed throughout the state. A defiant document, Calhoun’s “Exposition” outlined a theory of constitutional interpretation first adumbrated in the infamous Kentucky and Virginia … Continue reading
Remember Victory-In-Europe Day
December 1941 is usually remembered by Americans as that fateful month when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, thus thrusting the United States into World War II. However, consider an alternate scenario: Adolf Hitler appears triumphantly before the Reichstag announcing the destruction … Continue reading
Sick Chickens and Sick Laws
When President Obama made his famous declaration about how he was confident that “that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically … Continue reading
A Centennial Verdict on Progressivism (1912-2012)
Contemporary liberals fondly recall their progressive forebears from a century past, who railed against trusts and fought for social justice. Certainly, their forebears did much to make them proud; after all, who now could argue against measures that purified the … Continue reading