3/11 and 11/2: Vote to Reject a Truce with Terror
| November 2, 2004
Osama bin Laden has clarified this election in a way the candidates could not. He has made it clear that this election is about whether we will vote for a truce with terrorism--or whether we will vote to endure long enough to win the war.(->)
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The Washington Conundrum: Why We Can't Afford a Leader Who Will Say Anything to Get Elected
| October 18, 2004
Kerry fails the test that I call "The Washington Conundrum." The Washington Conundrum is named, not after Washington, DC, but after George Washington. It is my term for the basic dilemma of political science: the only person who can be trusted to wield the power of the chief executive is a person who doesn't want that power. The only person qualified to be president of the United States is a man like George Washington, a man with no lust for power, who serves in office reluctantly and gives up power willingly.(->)
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The Collectivist Convention: The Democrats' Bait-and-Switch Philosophy
| July 29, 2004
The Democrats have been told that they must not seem "anti-American" in time of war; that they have to try to capture the patriotic American "heartland"; that they have to be "optimistic" and "Reagan-esque." And so they tried to appeal to American values and ideals—all of which are implicitly based on individualism. But they have to harness those values to their collectivist agenda.(->)
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34 Months vs. 444 Days: There Jimmy Carter Goes Again, Blaming America for His Failures
| July 27, 2004
Those looking for "a virtually unbroken series of mistakes and miscalculations" might be tempted to remember, not the past 32 months, but the 444 days of the Iran hostage crisis, when Carter stood passive and paralyzed, his only attempt at action ending in a pathetically under-supported, doomed rescue mission. If one were to look for a moment at which America lost credibility and respect in the world, this would be it.(->)
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Martha Stewart's Achievement
| July 19, 2004
The result is that people act as if they can ignore the history and origins of a great American corporation, like Microsoft or Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and treat it as if it just bloomed into existence as a fluke. And thus, the effort and virtue needed to create such a business seems, to them, just as vague and substanceless as the claims that insider trading is a terrible crime. The two ideas are equally devoid of substance and thus hold equal weight in people's minds.(->)
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The Left's Propagandist: Michael Moore and the Intellectual State of Today's Left
| July 12, 2004
Why has Michael Moore become the hero of the left? He may be a propagandist, most reviewers admit, but he is _their_ propagandist--and the left is willing to sacrifice the truth to regain political power.(->)
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Delenda Est Fallujah: Fallujah Must Be Subdued If We Hope to Win in Iraq
| June 28, 2004
As to the new civilians leaders of Iraq, if they will not support vigorous action to crush the insurgency, then we have no reason to care whether they approve or not--since, under those circumstances, they will not last long. New Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi must openly back a US assault on Fallujah, or he will have failed to show the leadership necessary to keep the new Iraqi government alive. But if we are to have any hope of winning the war in Iraq, one first step is necessary. The order must come all the way down from President Bush: "Fallujah must be subdued."(->)
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The Hinge of the World: How Saudi Oil and Western Ideas Connect Two Opposite Civilizations
| June 14, 2004
This geographical accident connects the heart of Western Civilization--the
need for man-made power to drive our industrial civilization--to the heart
of Islamic Civilization: the holy city of Mecca and the traditionalist
Arab-Muslim societies of Arabia. Like fratricidal Siamese twins, two opposing civilizations have been joined
at the heart.(->)
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"A Real Invasion": Why the Muslim World is Afraid of American Television
| May 12, 2004
The Islamists are afraid of anything that causes their young people to
pursue the enjoyment of life in this world. That is the meaning of the
sheikh's complaint that "Big Brother" will cause young Muslims to "live in
the reality of these lesser things"--the "lesser things" being the joys of
this world. That message--which America radiates unconsciously, without
deliberate intent or plan--is the most powerful weapon we have against the
Islamic world.(->)
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"Repositioning" Reality: The World of Non-A in Fallujah
| May 5, 2004
The Fallujah standoff is being run by the politicians, and so we have entered a world where the Law of Identity has been repealed—where A is non-A and everything both is and isn't at the same time.(->)
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 Fine Young Cannibals: How the Democratic Party Put a Nice Face on the Morality of Sacrifice
| March 1, 2004
If Dean did not have the character traits to be trusted with leadership, how were the Democrats to select a candidate who did have those traits? They could have chosen a candidate who had distinguished himself by different ideas and policy choices. Instead, they looked for a man with precisely the same agenda as Dean, presented in a more acceptable style. The word that sums up this approach is that Democratic voters looked for a candidate who would be "electable."
This was the role of Senator Edwards, who dressed up class-warfare cannibalism in a benevolent demeanor—but more important, it is the key to the success of John Kerry.
Kerry does not present himself with a sunny, smiling exterior, but with an appearance better calculated to win the job of president. While Edwards is cheerful, Kerry is grave; while Edwards is fair-haired and boyish, Kerry appears grey-haired and mature; while Edwards is smiling, Kerry adopts a sloped-eyebrowed, sad Basset-hound expression intended to make him appear thoughtful, dignified, senatorial—and, he hopes, presidential.
While Edwards's sunny disposition is calculated to put a nice face on the class-warfare cannibalism of his economic agenda, Kerry's appearance is meant to cover up the most important feature of his campaign—and the one issue on which the Democrats most need the protective façade of a gravely serious demeanor: an agenda of foreign-policy surrender.(->)
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Reductio ad Totalitarianism
| June 26, 2003
"Imagine a society in which an unelected few, qualified for power only by their mastery of esoteric terminology and incantations, are able to dictate our everyday lives in the most minute detail.... Does this sound like...the reign of the theocratic mullahs in Iran? In fact, it is the system that a cabal of trial lawyers is trying to impose here in America. ..."(->)
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All Road Maps Lead to Disaster
| June 2, 2003
"This effort is as misguided as every failed Middle East peace plan of the past—because there is no 'road map' for achieving peace by negotiating with terrorists."
(->)
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The Road to Victory Goes Through Tehran
| May 15, 2003
President Bush has declared the end of "major combat operations" in Iraq, but...the largest and most important battle in that war still remains to be fought. The road to victory goes through Tehran.
(->)
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The Real Museum Looters
| May 12, 2003
Initial reports of the looting of the Iraqi National Museum sparked a frenzy of outrage.... It turns out, though, that...the looting was an inside job, orchestrated by museum staffers.... If this is true, then there is a striking—and deeply ironic—similarity between the looting of the Iraqi National Museum and the equally brazen vandalism of American museum holdings—committed eagerly by their curators in full compliance with federal law.
(->)
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The Ideological Reconstruction of Iraq
| May 8, 2003
"The plan for rebuilding post-war Iraq is astounding in its scope—from repairing roads and sewer systems to revamping the Iraqi government payroll system and printing school textbooks. Yet...what the Arab world really needs is not a transfusion of foreign money, but a transfusion of crucial Western ideas...."
(->)
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Don't Defy the UN—End It
| March 18, 2003
It is not that the United Nations has failed to show resolve or to live up to its charter. The problem is that the foundation of the United Nations is hopelessly corrupt. ...
(->)
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The Withering Blix-Krieg
| March 4, 2003
The weapons inspections looked like they would be what I labeled a "Blix-krieg," a phony war in which Blix and his inspectors go through the motions of looking for weapons while they provide diplomatic cover for more Iraqi deception. Now,...how goes the Blix-krieg? ...
(->)
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Dictatorship by the Numbers
| February 25, 2003
The leaders of the Venezuelan opposition have demanded immediate new elections to replace would-be dictator Hugo Chavez, arguing that the referendum scheduled for this August will give Chavez time to establish a dictatorship and render elections meaningless. These fears were dismissed by the international press as paranoia. Now they are being thoroughly vindicated. ...
(->)
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The Worldwide Epidemic of Doctors' Strikes
| February 18, 2003
The outbreak of doctors' strikes in America is spreading. So far, doctors in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Florida, and New Jersey have held temporary strikes to protest the prohibitive cost of medical malpractice insurance. Now doctors in Illinois have announced plans for a one-day strike next week. These strikes, so unusual in the US, are an early symptom of the spread to this country of a world-wide epidemic. ...
(->)
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Bad Economics in One Lesson
| February 11, 2003
Today, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning Washington think tank, published a full-page ad in the New York Times condemning the proposed Bush tax cuts. This pro-tax statement is signed by more than 400 economists, including ten Nobel laureates—for what that's worth.
Apparently, it's not worth very much, because the economists' statement is a classic lesson in bad economics. ...
(->)
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Defending America's Second Front
| February 4, 2003
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced today that the US is thinking about redeploying 24 long-range bombers within easy striking distance of North Korea. The only thing we ought to find shocking about this announcement is the fact that the administration is only considering this option. Faced with grave threats to our security, there is no excuse for being so tentative about defending the second front in America's War on Terrorism. ...
(->)
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The Self-Made State of the States
| January 28, 2003
In an admission that they have no congressional leadership to offer, the Democrats won't send Tom Daschle or Nancy Pelosi to deliver the Democratic rebuttal to the president's State of the Union address. They have given that job to Washington Governor Gary Locke, who will use his place in the spotlight to plead for a federal bailout of crashing state budgets. This is yet another attempt by state governments to shift the blame for their budget crisis onto someone—anyone—except themselves. ...
(->)
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The Iraq Charade
| January 21, 2003
The headline of an Associated Press report from earlier today declares, "Gaps Appear to Widen over Iraq within UN Security Council." The wording is, perhaps unintentionally, precise: the gaps only appear to be widening.... We are now exactly where we were four months ago, when President Bush started this UN charade. ...
(->)
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Atlas Shrugs in Venezuela
| January 14, 2003
A recent news article described the nationwide strike in Venezuela, in protest against the nascent dictatorship of Hugo Chavez, as seeming "like something from fiction." Well yes, it seems very similar to one work of fiction in particular: Ayn Rand's prophetic 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged. The parallels between fiction and fact are striking. ...(->)
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