Category: Feature

5

Pope Imitating Swift Imitating Horace

Horace’s satire was a sly commentary on his life among the great, as close friend to Maecenas, the wealthy advisor to Augustus.  In the first part of this imitation, Pope imagines his friend Dean Swift, a confidant of the Tory ministers, going over the same complaints about fame and influence.  Then, when he comes to Horace’s famous fable of the two mice, he makes a stab at pretending it is composed by his friend Matthew Prior–also an important political advisor and diplomat, who wrote more homely verse.   Rather than make a detailed commentary on the poem, I’ll be happy to...

5

What Is Paleoconservatism? Part One: The Beginnings

What is paleoconservatism?  I should have put the question in the past tense, but, in deference to the true believers who collect hula hoops, and 8-track tape players, we can pretend there is still some sort of active movement going by that name. Like many political labels—Whig and Tory, Rebel and Yankee—the word “paleoconservative” would seem to be an insult. 

8

Donald the Storm God, the Podcast

  Donald Trump, after plunging the world into poverty, misery, violence, and bigotry, is now using his evil powers to create storms that will destroy the goddess Gaia.  This is truly the Clash of the Titans.  Be on the look-out for the sequel, as the Evil Trump takes on Satan himself, defeats his master, and rules the universe.

29

Open Border Heresies

Why the immigration debate has been poisoned by cowardly pragmatists who avoid all the real issues… Podcast exclusive to Gold and Charter Members. Please Subscribe or Login for access.

8

Top Unconscious Election Issue Dates to 1949

Although I can’t prove it, I think an unconscious element in every presidential election is the fear a candidate might get us into a nuclear war. In my long career of voting for president, beginning with Ford/Carter in 1976, I certainly had a “gut loathing” of only two candidates I thought would be unstable and liable to lunge for the Nuclear Football and press the Button: John McCain, a Republican, in 2008, and Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, in 2016. I think a lot of voters shared that fear. There’s even a 1999 book, “The Gift of Fear and Other Survival...

14

The Tech Left, Censorship and the 2020 Election

Although he’s back on Twitter as of this writing, recently the tech giant locked gun scholar John Lott out of his account. He’s been the main source for my writing on guns and politics for two decades. And when it came out I reviewed his main book, “More Guns, Less Crime” – great title – as well as one of his other books. Lott’s “crime”? He actually read the New Zealand mass killer’s “manifesto” and quoted its socialist and environmentalist sections. That violated New Zealand’s policy of banning all discussion of the killings. But since when do New Zealand’s policies...

5

Podcast: Urban Blight–The Solution

Anyone with one eye half open is aware that American cities have become jungles of violence and sewers of vice. Unfortunately, most of the remedies proposed are worse than the disease. The only possible way out lies with changes more radical than Eastern Europe undertook at the end of the Cold War.

2

The National Conservatism Hullabaloo

I’ve seen a lot of different iterations of “conservatism” in my life, so I think I’ll pass on the new National Conservatism movement, which just held a conference in Washington, D.C. The least they could have done was hold the shindig out there in the “nation,” somewhere down in Flyover Country. How do you find out if it “plays in Peoria” if you’re not in Peoria? I’m also allergic to using “nationalism” instead of “patriotism.” Dr. Fleming criticized “nationalism” here. He makes the salient point that “nationalism” erases localism. It’s ironic the National Conservative movement is run by something called...

3

Wednesday’s Child: Who’s On Fleek

Called “Google Camp,” presumably because to Google’s event organizers being camp is always a good thing, the party drew some 300 of the great and the good who had used 114 private planes and an armada of megayachts to get here, expanding Sicily’s carbon footprint, by nearly one thousand tons of carbon dioxide, to the size of a Neanderthal’s flip-flop.