Category: Access

0

Debunking the Sanctuary Movement, Conclusion

This is the conclusion to my piece from 1985.  The points made include:  1) There is no right of or  justification for “civil disobedience.  Crime is crime, and treason is treason.  2) So-called “liberation theology” is only Marxist revolution with a false Christian gloss, 3) our primary moral obligations to family, community, and  nation take precedence over any imagined obligations to strangers, and, finally 4) the confusion of roles–national government dictating how children are reared while individuals and cities are making foreign policy–is a sign of a profound disorder in American life. Although civil disobedients like to lump their activities...

19

Fidel Castro, Dead at Last

Fidel Castro is dead, and USA’s official media are are beside themselves with grief over their fallen leader.  I hate to point out the obvious, but there is virtually nothing good to say about this thug, except he was lucky enough to take over Cuba during an American power vacuum, first when an exhausted and ailing Eisenhower was losing control and, then, when he easily fought off a challenge from a feeble-minded womanizing President who could not find the will to squelch this pustulent sore 90 miles off our coastline. Pre-Castro Cuba was no paradise, but there were economic opportunities.  People could get...

23

Wednesday’s Child:  Letter from London

Nobody is talking about Trump in London, I’m happy to say.  From a geopolitical perspective – provided you believe, as I do, that geopolitics is stark reality by a fancy name – this is naïve and foolish and a bit like hiding your head in the sand.  From a human perspective, however, it is immensely satisfying.  I would happily fly back to England just to escape the interminable tête-à-tête with the newsfeeds on my computer screen, where Trump has now overtaken the Kardashians as statesman and thinker. I stayed with my best friend there, the one who is getting divorced. ...

14

Trump Must Cut Parasite Pay

This is long overdue: “President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress are drawing up plans to take on the government bureaucracy they have long railed against, by eroding job protections and grinding down benefits that federal workers have received for a generation.” No wonder Virginia voted for Hillary. After the South switched to Republicans around the 1970s, the Old Dominion regularly voted for the GOP. When I lived there during the mid-1980s, the Maryland suburbs of D.C. were the place Democrats liked to live, while Northern Virginia was where Republicans tended to move, probably because that’s where the Pentagon and...

2

Debunking the Sanctuary Movement–30 Years Ago, Part I

This Perspective from January 1986 analyzed the budding sanctuary movement and dissected its entirely bogus spiritual, moral and constitutional foundations.  It infuriated Richard John Neuhaus, who at that time led the movement to silence an irritating political heretic.  I was naive and did not yet realize how much so-called conservatives hate the truth, whenever it conflicts with the short-term goals of their little movement. “Shelter from the Storm” The trial of 12 sanctuary workers in Tucson has heated up an issue which is being hailed in many quarters as the great moral issue of the 1980’s. The movement, whose members...

4

Anthony Trollope on Sermons

By

This is Trollope’s musings on the sermon preached by the odious Mr. Slope in Barchester Cathedral: There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries than the necessity of listening to sermons. No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent and be tormented. No one but a preaching clergyman can revel in platitudes, truisms, and untruisms, and yet receive, as his undisputed privilege, the same respectful demeanour as though words of impassioned eloquence, or persuasive logic, fell from his lips. Let a...

6

What Would Trump Success Be?

Historically, presidents are “successful” if they can achieve two, maybe three, great things in office. I define “successful” in their own terms – what they wanted, not what they ought to have done. Thus, Reagan was “successful” because he beat the Soviets in the Cold War, revived the U.S. economy and was the only president since World War II to be succeeded by a member of his own party. He was less “successful” with such goals as bringing “strict constitutionalists” to the Supreme Court; of his three appointments, only Antonin Scalia approached that goal. President Obama was “successful” in passing...

0

Wednesday’s Child:  This Way Up (2)

It is perfectly possible, even likely, thaat the reader whose face would be saved by the genre in the pages of my biography already knows more about Boris Pasternak than the one incontrovertible fact that he wrote the book on which a major motion picture called Doctor Zhivago was based.  Similarly, Nietzsche would have had the ready advantage of addressing a literary audience wholly receptive to the angry disclaimer that the Superman comic is only loosely based on his Zarathustra. But information, however complete, is not the same as the explanation of feeling which I have been reckless enough to...

1

Thomas Fleming: All Gone in Search of America

What does it mean to be an American? Major debates over legislation and proposed constitutional amendments raise the question. Without stretching a point too much, it is easy to see the American identity as the underlying question on the immigration issue, the Equal Rights Amendment, and perhaps even in the debate over abortion. It comes out very clear in discussion of the English Language Amendment sponsored last year by Senator Huddleston of Kentucky and supported by U.S. English, a group headed by former Senator and linguist S.I. Hayakawa. The amendment would make explicit a fact of life obvious to anyone that...

3

Three Cheers for the Electoral College!

  I’m gloating over how the Electoral College worked as it’s supposed to, as designed by the Founding Fathers: It kept California from being relevant. Was California in 1787-89 part of Spain? No matter. The Founders had a dream in Philadelphia and saw how disastrous this state would become. Leftists of all stripes now are screaming, as they did in 2000, about how the EC is “undemocratic.” Screeched a letter to the Washington Post, “The Electoral College, an undemocratic vestige, distorted the election by giving battleground state voters more weight and smaller states disproportionate representation.” Thank you for making my...