I Didn’t Know the Gun was Loaded
I’ve been on many a television or movie set in studios and on location and can say from my experience that when guns are present the prop master, armorer, directors, and actors are on high alert.
Category: Feature
Play the Russia Card Against China
The foreign policy crowd is in a tizzy over China threatening Taiwan. If Beijing invades, should we go to war to defend Taipei? I don’t think a war is going to happen.
Jerks 00.D: What happened to manners?
Jerks come in every imaginable age, size, sex, and type, but they all share one common quality: They have absolutely no manners,
Taking Responsibility for Crime
Willie Smith III was executed today in Alabama for the brutal and capricious murder of a woman he had kidnapped from an ATM. The usual critics of the death penalty have not been silent in their opposition to Smith’s execution.
What’s Happened to the Eschaton?
Many, many years ago, in my callow and misspent youth, I had a lapel button that said: “Don’t let them immanentize the eschaton.” This was a pretty good saying and conversation starter despite the fact, as I recall, that it was popularized by the intellectually shallow poseur William Buckley. The saying was an over-simplified reference to the vast, erudite, and dense writings of Eric Voegelin. Reduced shamefully to the simplest terms, immanentizing the eschaton is an attempt to bring Heaven to earth by the actions of men. For Christian civilization the given universe is a divine design which includes the...
The “Genius of the People”
Our Founding Fathers in their deliberations often referred to “the genius of the people.” It was a concept long familiar in Western civilizational discussions of society and government. What did they mean?
Fiona Hill Explains It All for You
I can’t remember the last time a Foreign Affairs article made a stir among the commentariat. But this week it was Fiona Hill’s “The Kremlin’s Strange Victory: How Putin Exploits American Dysfunction and Fuels American Decline.”
Resisting Evil, IV: The Duty to Defend
Christ’s equation of physical violence with internal anger raises questions that juries often have to face: What are the circumstances that might justify the use of lethal violence in self-defense? Specifically, when an argument leads to a violent altercation, does the one party bear any responsibility for the consequences if, though the other party struck the first blow, his own anger was a contributing factor?
Wednesday’s Child: A Reckless Fantasy
“Reckless fantasies of confrontation” was a favorite phrase of Soviet propaganda. Washington, went the argument, is a trigger-happy bully and all men of good will, meaning everybody on the Kremlin payroll, must unite in the face of such fantasies if holocaust is to be avoided.
All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Invade
One of the benefits of Joe Biden in the White House is he can’t give long speeches. I suggest watching all of his Sept. 21 address to the United Nations. It’s half an hour and features the usual hesitations and mispronunciations.
