Politics is all about hatred.  Never mind who you’re voting for: It’s who you’re voting against that really counts.  And that’s why any disagreement I may have with Donald Trump’s actual policies is completely irrelevant.  Because what really matters is that all the people I really hate—the media, the leadership of both parties, the entire...

Donald Trump has upended the GOP presidential primary process and turned it into the most entertaining reality show yet.  If The Donald’s road to the White House is blocked—either by the Republican elites or by his own tendency to go too far—and he returns to TV land, he’ll have a hard time topping this one....

California is showing the way forward for the aspiring authoritarians in our midst—and the drought is providing them with the perfect opportunity.  The front page of my local rag, the Press-Democrat, ran a story by Washington Post writer Bob Kuznia, “State’s wealthy guzzling water,” which sported this lede: “Drought or no drought, Steve Yuhas resents...

We have crossed the boundary that lies between Republic and Empire.  If you ask when, the answer is that you cannot make a single stroke between day and night; the precise moment does not matter.  There was no painted sign to say: “You are now entering Imperium.”  Yet it was a very old road and...

The waitress at my favorite Japanese restaurant, a spotlessly clean little joint in a Sonoma County hamlet not far from my home, had no idea what she was getting into as she took the order.  Two unremarkable looking customers had walked in the door: one an older, rather prissy-looking man with wire-rim glasses, and the...

I want to apologize to my readers, although I can only hope for forgiveness.  I certainly don’t deserve it. OK, Justin—I can hear you now—what have you done this time? The sin of which I am guilty is optimism of the most fatuous sort—or, rather, projecting an inauthentic optimism onto a most unworthy object.  The...

I’ve been a libertarian activist since the age of 16 or so—long before the term libertarian became known and widely used by the general public.  Indeed, when I announced my conversion to parents, friends, and associates I distinctly recall a number of them saying something to the effect of “Gee, I didn’t know the librarians...

It’s a Charlie Hebdo world—a place where “free speech” means the freedom to depict the Pope in drag with the caption “Ready for anything in order to win some clients?”  Where “liberty” means crude drawings, of the sort one might see on a men’s room wall, showing the Holy Trinity in a series of sexual...

You knew Jeb Bush was going to run for president; after all, assuming the worst is really the essence of conservatism.  And, sure enough, he’s “actively exploring the possibility”—a half-measure that prefigures the weakness and tepidity of another Bush presidency. Conservatives tempted to glom onto an alleged winner might want to contemplate the wisdom of...

My grandfather, Nicola Raimondo, came from a little town called Torre di Ruggiero, at the tip of the Italian boot.  It was a poor place then, and it looks to be even poorer today, from what I can tell, with half the place for sale and the other half in ruins.  He was 15 years...

You knew it would come to this.  So did I.  And yet one is still surprised by the sheer boldness of it all.  From my local paper: California public schools do an inadequate job of teaching students about gay and lesbian history, despite a 2011 law that requires schools to teach such lessons, according to...

I have lost the battle with my garden, the only war I care about these days.  The Drought (yes, I mean to capitalize it, to personify it as if it were an angry god) has scorched the yard, and there is no such thing as victory in the face of such an enemy—only the hope...

They are coming: on trains, on buses, on foot, all the way from Central America, where they meet up with smugglers who take them across our nonexistent border.  This has been happening for decades, but there’s one big difference in the recent wave of illegal immigration: These are children, many under ten years of age—50,000...

I have a recurring nightmare in which the war criminals who lied us into Iraq reappear to mock the hundreds of thousands they murdered in cold blood, repeating the same lies, the same rationalizations, the same mindless slogans that lured us into that hellhole to begin with.  Bill Kristol, the Kagan clan, the Israel Firsters,...

Think of what we’re trying to do: upend the biggest, deadliest, most intractable apparatus of power this world has ever seen.  The sheer scope of the Leviathan State is so daunting that any patriot who seeks to take it on is immediately faced with the enormity of his task—and that is sure to overwhelm even...

Washington desperately needed a new enemy, so the timing of Putin’s bloodless “invasion” of Crimea was just right.  Al Qaeda’s value as a fear generator has been seriously compromised ever since the death of Osama bin Laden, and now that it looks like the U.S. government has taken the Syrian affiliate of the group under...

One minute we were just waiting for the bombs to drop on Syria.  The next we were listening to the President tell us why it was a good idea—but never mind! What in the heck happened? The American people rose up, that’s what happened.  They called their representatives in Congress and told them, in no...

It’s like something out of The Lord of the Rings: a vast empire ruled by a king known as “B’arack”—an Orcish name if ever there was one—sends out its mechanical murderers to wreak destruction far and wide.  They strike from the air, whistling over homes huddled against the hills, dropping down on children as they...

When it comes to race, life in America resembles nothing so much as a reenactment of Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery.”  That story, you’ll recall, depicted a town that seemed normal—except that, once every year, there would be a lottery, and if you picked the one black stone among so many white ones, the...

Washington is reeling from revelations that the NSA is turning the country into a virtual Panopticon.  Americans are now learning that all our phone calls are turned over to the feds, who also have their tentacles in the servers of the major internet providers.  The whistle-blower, 29-year-old Edward Snowden, a remarkably articulate former CIA employee...

I first saw it lying right under the fence, stretched out a good eight to ten feet long.  A rope?  Did I put that there? In the next moment I realized what it was. When I moved out to Sonoma County’s “wine country,” I knew there’d be wildlife—you know, birds, and maybe a few raccoons,...

There are ghosts in this house.  Yes, more than one, I think.  Of course, I don’t believe in ghosts—except that I can hear them. Every house emits noises, especially late at night.  Or, perhaps, it speaks during the daylight hours, only to be drowned out by the drone of traffic, lawn mowers, barking dogs, and...

The death of Hugo Raphael Chávez Frías provoked cries of “Hallelujah!” from pundits on the right.  Michael Moynihan, writing in the Daily Beast (the internet incarnation of Newsweek), jeered “Good riddance!” while he danced on the Venezuelan strongman’s grave.  All the usual suspects—the War Street Journal, the “conservatives” over at National Review, and the Israel...

The nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense has sparked a firestorm of opposition from Israel’s fifth column in the United States.  It is a useful example of just how the Jewish state’s parasitic relationship with America works. Israel cannot stand alone: She is a European colony in the midst of an Arab sea...

When 20-year-old Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered 26 people, most of them children, after killing his own mother at home, the nation went into one of its periodic orgies of recrimination—mostly directed at the National Rifle Association, which had to shut down its Facebook and Twitter accounts thanks to the...

Talk of secession is in the air.  A number of internet petitions from several states, asking to be allowed to leave the Union, have garnered tens of thousands of signatures.  Unsurprisingly, Texas leads the list, and Ron Paul has endorsed the idea.  According to him, “secession is a deeply American principle.”  True enough, which is...

For once, we actually had a candidate, but as Ron Paul retires and his son does his best to sully the family brand name, the future of the movement he inspired is in doubt.  No one was surprised that Jesse Benton, head honcho of the Paul presidential campaign—known for his propensity to sell out at...

St. Patrick’s Church is now a modern structure consisting of two red-brick tetrahedrons sprung up, like some poisonous mushroom, over the transformed landscape.  The original building, Old St. Patrick’s, is down the street from the usurper, crouching in the shadows, dreaming of the days when a Roman Catholic church could never have been mistaken for...

A fine summer day it was, and as I walked down my quiet country road I smugly congratulated myself for being unafraid of any bills that might lie waiting in the darkness of the rusty old mailbox.  I made a mental note to get a new one, perhaps an elaborate one.  Now, where would I...

“Hey, why don’t you get out there and mow the lawn?” How many times had I heard that refrain?  Through all the days of my youth, it seemed.  My father would always laugh when he said it, knowing full well I would be doing no such thing.  Not that he would have trusted me with...

Ray Bradbury’s passing, at the age of 91, evokes sadness and nostalgia for the lost world of my youth.  I discovered him early on, before he became quite as famous as he is today, in the science-fiction magazines that were my earliest “serious” reading material.  His stories featured real people, not the walking, talking clichés...

There’s no doubt the President’s endorsement of gay “marriage” was stage-managed: The timing was the key.  He did it hours after the news that North Carolinians had voted to put a ban on the practice in their state constitution.  Pressure from his supporters—and some of his biggest donors, I have no doubt—contributed to the decision. ...

I’ve avoided writing about racial politics for the same reason I’ve avoided stepping on land mines, but the news is filled with nothing but racial conflict these days: Trayvon Martin, the firing of John Derbyshire from National Review, the purging of Pat Buchanan from MSNBC, the daily accusations from the liberal media that conservative opponents...

Charles Koch was standing in line, waiting for his greaseburger.  The scene: a little greasy spoon at the foot of San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill, where we low-level Kochtopus employees grabbed a quick hamburger for lunch.  The place was smoky, unappetizing, and cheap.  So what was one of the richest men in country doing there? He...

The contractor is gone, the painter has departed, and the electrician has shed light where before there was only darkness.  The house glints fresh green as the afternoon sun finally pierces the clouds on this unusually warm winter day: 65 degrees in full sun.  Asphodel are arising from their winter graves, ghostly white and waving...

At this point it is clear that Rep. Ron Paul is not going to be the presidential nominee of the Republican Party.  Yet it seems likely that he will outlast all his rivals but for Romney, and that he will have a substantial bloc of delegates at the convention.  Paul has the money, and the...

What is a populist? This much used (and abused) term has gone through several American incarnations.  First, it was the name of a 19th-century political party whose program was as vague as its success was short-lived: The party combined an untenable admixture of Southern agrarianism and social-democratic panaceas leavened with a healthy hatred of Eastern...

I’ve bought three houses in as many years, and sold two of them.  Having been excluded from participating in the housing bubble by extreme poverty, I suppose I’ve been making up for lost time.  In 2008, when my mom died, I inherited what was—by my modest standards—a considerable sum, and there was no doubt about...