Feature

Remembering a Grimly Prophetic July 4

Editor’s note: A shorter version of this article first appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. On July 4, 1826, America awaited a special moment. It was the young nation’s Jubilee. It was the 50th anniversary of its birth, of the signing of … Continue reading

Trump vs. Reagan: Unprincipled vs. Principled

Editor’s note: This article first appeared at ConservativeReview.com. In my previous piece in this series, I quoted a Ronald Reagan speech to CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, from February 6, 1977, where Reagan defined conservatism. Among his crucial points … Continue reading

Happy Father’s Day, Jean

Father’s Day invites us to ponder the father figures we have known—not just our biological fathers, but any man who has blessed us with fatherly action at some point in our lives. Several years ago, I wrote about never having … Continue reading

Trump vs. Reagan: What is a Conservative?

Editor’s note: This article first appeared at ConservativeReview.com. Many of Donald Trump’s supporters have compared him to Ronald Reagan. It is quite instructive that Trump himself picked up the 1980 Reagan campaign slogan, “Let’s Make America Great Again.” Trump speaks positively of Ronald … Continue reading

Hiroshima: Obama vs. Truman

President Obama’s address at Hiroshima, Japan on May 27 provides us with a good opportunity to examine his foreign policy attitude and contrast it with the views of one of America’s most courageous war-time presidents—Harry S. Truman. This exercise has … Continue reading

More than Ever, We Need Each Other

My heart aches over the stories I hear about heroin overdoses. Local fathers post stories about their sons and daughters, fatal victims of the heroin market. Police conduct raids. The illegal marketing demand continues to fund Afghanistan poppy farmers. Other … Continue reading

Hillary Clinton’s Church Problem

Editor’s note: A version of this article first appeared in Crisis magazine. The 2016 presidential race, like all presidential races, has raised questions and controversies regarding the religious faiths of the candidates. Donald Trump’s beliefs have been questioned, as were … Continue reading

Better Homes and Guardians

Five score and two years ago, Robert Frost wrote “Mending Wall,” a poem seeking to extract wisdom from stony New England soil. It begins: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” While he didn’t have Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric in mind, … Continue reading

Vietnam in the Rear View Mirror

There were 2,709,918 Americans who served in the Vietnam War. Of that number approximately 850,000 are alive. The youngest is 54. Because there were senior officers and non-commissioned officers in Vietnam who fought in World War II, the oldest are … 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

Which Bathroom Did Klinger Use?

In M*A*S*H, one of America’s longest-running TV shows, the beloved character Max Klinger dressed as a woman. Klinger hoped to get a so-called “Section 8,” which is a mental-health discharge in the military. Everyone who watched the show when it … Continue reading