The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘We Were Somewhere Around Barstow on the Edge of the Desert When the Trump Derangement Syndrome Began to Take Hold …’

Look, if Ed Driscoll wants to play the literary allusion sweepstakes, I’ll see his Allen Ginsberg and raise him a Hunter S. Thompson. But the important point, really, is not about trying to win a silly game of Internet one-upsmanship, but rather that Bill Kristol has become a pathetic joke — a caricature of a […]

The Action and the Reaction

What have we learned here? A self-declared “free speech absolutist” makes an offer to purchase Twitter, and many liberals instantly get nightmare visions of Hitler. Glenn Reynolds observes: “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is the motto of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post. It may sound like a warning, but more and more it seems like a […]

The Problem With ‘Equality’

  In the mid-1970s, in an attack on [Wilmoore] Kendall, [Harry] Jaffa published an article, “Equality as a Conservative Principle,” the very title of which served to mark him as a latter-day Jacobin in the eyes of many conservatives influenced by Edmund Burke. (“Believe me, Sir, those who attempt to level never equalise. In all […]

Is Ace of Spades ‘Cruel’?

Who was it that first described Ace of Spades as an ewok? I don’t know, but it stuck, because he was bearded and bespectacled and cuddly. Maybe since he’s started working out — GAINZZ! — Ace is less ewok-like than he used to be, but was it fair for Victor Davis Hanson to call him […]

Policy Goal: Avoid World War III

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, I keep thinking of Barbara Tuchman’s Pulitzer-winning history The Guns of August, which chronicled the miscalculations that led to World War I. Probably few of the people blabbing about the need for NATO to defend Ukraine have read Tuchman’s book, and certainly they seem heedless of its lessons. While I’m […]

What ‘Intellectuals’ Believe

Elie Mystal Jr. is the son of a Haitian immigrant. His father became a politician in Suffolk County, N.Y., whose “tenure as a county lawmaker ended in 2008 after he faced charges that he lied about living in the district in 2007 and 2008, a period during which he was splitting his time between Huntington […]

Is the Irony Obvious Enough?

To extend this quote from Henry Rogers, a/k/a Ibram X. Kendi: “The conjoined twins are two sides of the same destructive body. The idea that capitalism is merely free markets, competition, free trade, supplying and demanding, and private ownership of the means of production operating for a profit is a whimsical and ahistorical as the […]

‘Liberal Creationism,’ Revisited

William Saletan marks his 25-year anniversary at Slate-dot-com with a column discussing what he’s learned, about himself and the online audience, during his quarter-century at the original Internet magazine. Among other things, he laments the rise of Twitter warfare and the way centrifugal forces seem to be driving both Left and Right toward tribalism, with […]

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