Category: Access

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Free Content

21 Feb, 2021

With Fire and Sword III: More on Men

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Let us first and briefly consider several character portrayals before going on in the next stage to speak of the political dimensions.  I’ll pass over our young hero, who is a somewhat more violent version than Scott’s most heroic characters and look at the variety of tough men portrayed:  Chelmnitski, Bogun, Tugai Bey the Tartar chief, Zagloba and the Prince. Chelmnitsk is the pivot of the action.  He is the soul of the rebellion and the personification of the Ukrainian Cossacks.  The wrong he has suffered from the Polish elite–whose leaders he understands very well–have given him, at least in...

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20 Feb, 2021

Rush Limbaugh, RIP

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You’re probably read some things about Rush Limbaugh, who died on February 17 at age 70. I hope you’ll indulge a little perspective from someone in the conservative commentary business from Rush’s beginning as a national figure until now. In 1987, President Reagan got rid of the unfair Fairness Doctrine, which mandated “equal time” for political commentary on TV and radio. That especially hurt conservatives. The first to benefit from the action was Rush, who moved in 1988 from a Sacramento gig to New York City and national broadcasting. But he always kept references to his California days in his...

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17 Feb, 2021

Trump Show Trial in the Green Zone

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The Trump Show Trial coincided with my finishing Stephen Kotkin’s “Stalin: The Paradoxes of Power.” The monumental book ends with two events: Stalin deciding that Marxist principles dictated finally collectivizing agriculture, which led to 7 million deaths in the Holodomor. And the Shakhty Trial of mine workers, which Uncle Joe – as American liberals lovingly called him – used to shock any objectors to collectivization into submission.

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6 Feb, 2021

Ricky Vaughn, Political Prisoner

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In 1945, a decorated artillery officer in the Red Army wrote a letter ridiculing “the mustachioed one,” Stalin. He was arrested by the secret police and given a long sentence in the Gulag. That was Solzhenitsyn. Last week Douglass Mackey was arrested for making jokes during the 2016 election. He went under the nom de comedy Ricky Vaughn, after the character played by Charlie Sheen in Major League,”the 1989 baseball spoof.  Tyrannies don’t like comedy. Vaughn’s alleged crime was putting up on Twitter suggestions that Hillary Clinton supporters could vote for her by tweeting to a specific number. Only an...

13

Free Content

3 Feb, 2021

The Pros and Cons of Pro-Life by Jerry Salyer

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I can’t say how many times I have heard some bishop or diocesan official or other representative of the pro-life movement explain solemnly that being “truly pro-life” means you won’t just be concerned about abortion.  No, we also need to be committed to alleviating the plight of migrants, the homeless, Third World babies in need of adoption, those on death row, and for all I know the polar bears.