Brazellisms

Thomas Madden, writing for the Wall Street Journal, anecdotally notes that if history serves us, then all of these written pronouncements of America's pre-mortem -- that is our looming death -- serve to suggest that we are in our heyday.  Referring to the decline of Rome... The military dictators who seized power in Rome and led the empire on its downward spiral did not much like reading about their own shortcomings, and they had ways of making sure that they didn't have to. ... Read More

I've long loved when public figures apologize for an "offensive reaction" or the public's "offense," when they make offensive comments, but do not actually apologize for the comments themselves.  The latest is Hillary Clinton's terse apology for the comment where she strangely linked Bobby Kennedy's assassination to her husband's candidacy in 1992 and her own candidacy in 2008.  Her apology was, from the New York Times, as follows: Her remarks were met with quick criticism from the campaign of Senator Barack Obama, and ... Read More

It's the 40th anniversary of the Spring of 1968, a time widely characterized as setting the stage for the remainder of the 20th century.  A number of publications, journalists, and so on, have reminisced about the era -- many negatively, some positively -- largely because we realize that 1968 is imaginary: Socialism had already been a failure by then and we didn't realize that for another 20 years.  Christopher Hitchens, writing for the City Journal, notes that he never found it very surprising that ... Read More

Hm.  Government is Good, so says the internet.  I'm pleased that they characterize the conservative view of government, largely, correctly.  That is to say, as conservatives, we are skeptical of government.  Very often, media, pop-culture, and so on, interpret the conservative movement as being a broadening of government, which it isn't at all  -- conservatives, across every country and every culture, should uniformly seek to constrict government.  This is precisely why statist jihadism, fascism, and other movements often labelled as conservative, are entirely ... Read More

Jimmy Carter gets a pretty harsh rap from rationalists who rightly recognize him as the worst ex-president in American history, and perhaps the worst president in American history.  So it comes as no surprise that Carter published an editorial this morning through the New York Times championing his achievements in the Middle East, entitled Pariah Diplomacy.  The article is another attempt to boost sales of his Peace, Not Apartheid published last year.  The timing of Carter's article is just wraught with failure, ... Read More

There has been a call, since the emergence of the Reverend Wright issue, for Americans to have a conversation about race.  It has been brought up time and time again, "we need to have a conversation about race," and so I guess that means we have not had it and we are not having it now.  Well, I'm going to change all that.  I am going to start the conversation on race... and I am going to start it with this point: 92% of ... Read More

Celebrate Good Times!  Global Warming is out.  Global Cooling is back in!  Global Cooling was the craze back in the 1970s, caused because of catastrophic global dimming (where humans caused so much smog/crap that it made the Earth cooler... yes, I know this stands in conflict with the current theory that human pollution has led to warming, but this was the apex of the politico-scientific community of the 1970s; global warming is the apex of the politico-scientific community of the 2000s).  Earth Day was yesterday, and so ... Read More

Democrats and liberals, especially Obama supporters, are up and arms in complaints with how ABC handled the debate last night between Obama and Clinton.  They're crying foul because, oh gosh, Obama was asked questions that he didn't have answers for... what low-ball politics... how dirty of ABC!  Didn't they get the memo that the media has to treat Obama differently from everybody else...  didn't somebody tell George Stephonopolis that treating Democrats the same way that media has treated Republicans for years is ... Read More

Pope Benedict is in the United States.  It has been impossibly difficult to avoid the story, and a wonderful story that it is.  Benedict marks a return to Theology and Catechism for the Catholic Church, a refreshing alternative to the globe-trotting John Paul II, who while a true icon in world history -- and perhaps the greatest leader of the 20th century -- lacked a certain theological luminosity.  John Paul was popular, is popular, and what he represented for a post-total-war American ... Read More

Somehow Elton John is a top story in the presidential campaigns.  While campaigning for Hillary Clinton, Sir Elton said that he was amazed by the "misogynistic attitude of people in this country," explaining Hillary's slew of failures behind sexist men (arguably those who he himself would never sleep with).  From any sort of reasonable standpoint, this is obviously a joke... but from a greater perspective, from the greatest perspective -- that of politics -- how is it that the Hillary campaign cannot ... Read More