Category: Feature

9

I HATE TRUMP, 2:  08-19-17, 9:00 AM CDT

I have always hated Trump, even when he was a star on reality TV.  Even before.  To me, The Art of the Deal is really The Art of the Steal.   That is what all businessmen are, fundamentally, especially big businessmen:  thieves.  One of my professors (Harvard Law, 1987!) told the class that someone—I guess it was JFK—once said that property is theft.  He was so right!  I absolutely hate the rich.  A little guy like me, worth only a couple hundred million, can’t get justice in this country.  Look at poor Bernie Sanders’ wife, the way she is being...

14

I HATE TRUMP: 08-18-17, 9:00 AM CDT

This is a President?  Instead of issuing  high-minded moral diatribes against racism, when some minor incident develops in  Kankakee or Charlottesville, this big-haired moron wastes his time on forcing North Korea to back down.  Then, as was noted on NPR so correctly, even his religious advisors–men who are supposed to be of high moral character–refuse to resign in protest. What planet do these so-called Christians live on? Why doesn’t this moron admit the truth?  The South is evil, except for the African Americans and Mexicans who live there.  American Slavery was the worst moral evil in the history of the human race, worse...

15

Wednesday’s Child: A Portrait of the President as a Young Man

As a young jobbing journalist in London I used to do a lot of book reviewing for The Times, then still the pre-eminent paper in Britain.  They paid me £1 a word, which meant that even at the rate of two or three pieces a month body and soul could be kept together, with a bob or two left over for cigarettes and booze.  Last week I was trawling through old photocopies of some of my clippings and found one that made me giggle, dated April 8, 1989 and entitled “Diary of a Nobody.”  I’m quite sure that Rupert Murdoch,...

4

Actually, North Korea Can’t Hit the U.S., or Guam, With a Nuke

Americans sure get in a tizzy these days. What happened to the people that methodically destroyed Hitler and Tojo in less than four years, then calmly faced down the Soviets in the Cold War? The latest “threat” is from the ridiculous Kim Jong Un of North Korea. This time, supposedly, he’s years or months away from launching a nuclear-tipped ICBM at the American mainland, or at least Guam and its U.S. military bases. The Bezos-Amazon-Washington Post headlined, “North Korea now making missile-ready nuclear weapons, U.S. analysts say.” But as Justin Raimondo noted, the Post quoted only a single sentence from...

20

Simple Simon’s Political Lexicon: Liberal

  In one of our discussions, I hinted that our conversations might be expedited by agreeing to use certain words, e.g., liberal, conservative, radical,  Marxist, traditionalist, culture/cultural, republican, democratic, in a precise manner that takes account of historical reality.  The most obvious term with which to begin is the almost universally abused word “Iiberal.” Political Liberal:  Someone who advocates liberty and individual autonomy as the ultimate good and seeks to weaken or eliminate all barriers and impediments that stand in the way of an individual’s quest for fulfillment.  At different periods Liberals have opposed monarchy, established churches, aristocracy, tradition, and...

0

Wednesday’s Child: Letter from Sardinia

A capital delusion of the rich, to the effect that money can be transmuted into beauty, is dwarfed by a mass delusion of the poor, to the effect that beauty can be transmuted into money.  As in the case of nuclear transmutation in physics, neither of the two processes is an impossibility. Yet scientists warn that while particle bombardment can easily turn gold into a base metal like lead, the reverse, though possible in theory, is far too costly and time-consuming to be of any practical benefit to the avaricious. An alchemist, or for that matter anybody who’s got his...

0

Bring Back the Spoils System!

  Nowadays American history in high school consists of unrelenting attacks on our country as a racist, sexist, etc., hellhole. But back when I took the class at Wayne Memorial High School back in 1971, we learned about how horrible the old spoils system was, and why our country leaped into the progressive future with Civil Service Reform. Although he didn’t use the term, the spoils system largely was instituted by the great President Andrew Jackson. It was a way to get an unresponsive bureaucracy to perform its duties. If a functionary treated citizens badly, he knew they could vote...

0

Rome and Back

I am frequently asked questions about travel, and now that we have announced our Fall convivial program in Italy, I expect to be inundated by requests for information, to which I shall cheerfully and gratefully respond.  Nondimeno, I think it will be helpful if I put together some anticipatory observations. Passport Before you do anything, you should check your passport and determine that your passport is valid beyond several months of your return date.  You may, of course, check out various travel websites as well as the US State Department, and you will find as many answers as there are...

11

Hey Hey, HO HO, Cultural Conservatives Have Got to Go

This is the revised second part of my opening lecture at the 2017 Summer Symposium To understand the West’s cultural suicide, we might  begin by looking at an historical event, not from ancient Greece or 18th century France or even from the legendary 1960’s, which are now regarded as ancient history.  Let us start, instead, with with an episode in the culture war that has become a legend.  The year is 1987, just 30 years ago, and the place is Stanford University.  There stands “the Rev.”Jesse Jackson leading a group of 500 Stanford students, chanting “Hey Hey Ho Ho.  Western...

5

How to “Get” Trump

  Most people, especially left-wingers and neocons, still don’t “get” President Trump. Yet the clues are right before our eyes, if you just look. Numerous books and articles describe who he is, and how he operates. A big problem for left-wingers, neocons and others is that they expect politicians to be a certain way, even though they know Trump never has held elective office. They expect him to be like one of the Bushes, or the Clintons, or Obama, or even Reagan or Jimmy Carter. They expect him to be someone who “plays the game” of politics. And they expect...