Is the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, a RINO—a revolutionary in name only? So they must be muttering around the barracks of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps today. For while American hawks are saying we gave away the store to Tehran, consider what ayatollah agreed to. Last week, he gave...

To awaken Thursday to front-page photos of U.S. sailors kneeling on the deck of their patrol boat, hands on their heads in postures of surrender, on Iran’s Farsi Island, brought back old and bad memories. In January 1968, LBJ’s last year, 82 sailors of the Pueblo were captured by North Korea and held hostage with...

Three weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, and clarity emerges. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, is in trouble. Polls show her slightly ahead of Socialist Bernie Sanders in Iowa, but narrowly behind in New Hampshire. And the weekend brought new revelations about yet more classified and secret documents sent over her private email server...

For Xi Jinping, it has been a rough week. Panicked flight from China’s currency twice caused a plunge of 7 percent in her stock market, forcing a suspension of trading. Kim Jong Un, the megalomaniac who runs North Korea, ignored Xi’s warning and set off a fourth nuclear bomb. While probably not a hydrogen bomb...

The New Year’s execution by Saudi Arabia of the Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr was a deliberate provocation. Its first purpose: Signal the new ruthlessness and resolve of the Saudi monarchy where the power behind the throne is the octogenarian King Salman’s son, the 30-year-old Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman. Second, crystallize, widen and...

Each year, The McLaughlin Group, the longest-running panel show on national TV, which began in 1982, announces its awards for the winners and losers and the best and the worst of the year. Rereading my list of 39 awardees suggests something about how our world is changing. As “Person of the Year” and “Biggest Winner,”...

On Jan. 1, 2002, the day that euro coins and banknotes entered into circulation, my column, “Say Goodbye to the Mother Continent,” contained this pessimistic prognosis: “This European superstate will not endure, but break apart on the barrier reef of nationalism. For when the hard times come, patriots will recapture control of their national destinies...

“I worry greatly that the rhetoric coming from the Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, is sending a message to Muslims here . . . and . . . around the world, that there is a ‘clash of civilizations.'” So said Hillary Clinton in Saturday night’s New Hampshire debate. Yet, that phrase was not popularized by Donald...

“If you’re in favor of World War III, you have your candidate.” So said Rand Paul, looking directly at Gov. Chris Christie, who had just responded to a question from CNN’s Wolf Blitzer as to whether he would shoot down a Russian plane that violated his no-fly zone in Syria. “Not only would I be...

“Buchanan, if you ever hear of a group getting together to stop X, be sure to put your money on X.” So, Richard Nixon told me half a century ago, after he had been badly burned in just such a futile and failed enterprise. It was the Cleveland Governors Conference of 1964. Sen. Barry Goldwater...

Calling for a moratorium on Muslim immigration “until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” Donald Trump this week ignited a firestorm of historic proportions. As all the old hate words—xenophobe, racist, bigot—have lost their electric charge from overuse, and Trump was being called a fascist demagogue and compared to...

In Sunday’s first-round of regional elections in France, the clear and stunning winner was the National Front of Marine Le Pen. Her party rolled up 30 percent of the vote, and came in first in 6 of 13 regions. Marine herself won 40 percent of her northeast district. Despite tremendous and positive publicity from his...

In the feudal era there were the “three estates”—the clergy, the nobility and the commons. The first and second were eradicated in Robespierre’s Revolution. But in the 18th and 19th century, Edmund Burke and Thomas Carlyle identified what the latter called a “stupendous Fourth Estate.” Wrote William Thackeray: “Of the Corporation of the Goosequill—of the...

Monday, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” hosted a spirited discussion with Donald Trump on whether he was right in asserting that Muslims in New Jersey celebrated as the towers came down on 9/11. About Muslim celebrations in Berlin, however, there appears to be no doubt. In my chapter “Eurabia,” in “State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion...

Turkey’s decision to shoot down a Russian warplane was a provocative and portentous act. That Sukhoi Su-24, which the Turks say intruded into their air space, crashed and burned—in Syria. One of the Russian pilots was executed while parachuting to safety. A Russian rescue helicopter was destroyed by rebels using a U.S. TOW missile. A...

If the purpose of terrorism is to terrify, the Islamic State had an extraordinary week. Brussels, capital of the EU and command post of mighty NATO, is still in panic and lockdown. “In Brussels, fear of attack lingers” was Monday’s headline over the Washington Post‘s top story, which read: “Not since Boston came to a...

In denouncing Republicans as “scared of widows and orphans,” and castigating those who prefer Christian refugees to Muslims coming to America, Barack Obama has come off as petulant and unpresidential. Clearly, he is upset. And with good reason. He grossly, transparently underestimated the ability of ISIS, the “JV” team, to strike outside the caliphate into...

Among the presidential candidates of the Republican Party and their foreign policy leaders on Capitol Hill the cry is almost universal: Barack Obama has no strategy for winning the war on ISIS. This criticism, however, sounds strange coming from a party that controls Congress but has yet to devise its own strategy, or even to...

Rand Paul had his best debate moment Tuesday when he challenged Marco Rubio on his plans to increase defense spending by $1 trillion. “You cannot be a conservative if you’re going to keep promoting new programs you’re not going to pay for,” said Paul. Marco’s retort triggered the loudest cheers of the night: “There are...

“A modern day mass migration is taking place . . . that could change the face of Europe’s civilization,” warned Hungarian President Viktor Orban. “If that happens, that is irreversible. . . . There is no way back from a multicultural Europe,” said Orban. “If we make a mistake now, it will be forever.” Orban...

“Dalton Trumbo was a socialist, but he loved being rich.” So says Bryan Cranston, who stars in Trumbo, out this week, and plays the screenwriter who went to prison with the Hollywood Ten in the time of Harry Truman. Actually, Trumbo was not a socialist. Bernie Sanders is a socialist. Trumbo was a Stalinist, a...

“The United States is being sucked into a new Middle East war,” says the New York Times. And the Times has it exactly right. Despite repeated pledges not to put “boots on the ground” in Syria, President Obama is inserting 50 U.S. special ops troops into that country, with more to follow. U.S. A-10 “warthog”...

Trailed by two Chinese warships, the guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen sailed inside the 12-nautical-mile limit of Subi Reef, a man-made island China claims as her national territory. Beijing protested. Says China: Subi Reef and the Spratly Island chain, in a South China Sea that carries half of the world’s seaborne trade, are as much ours...

Are Catholic truths immutable? Or can they change with the changing times? This is the deeper question behind the issues that convulsed the three-week synod on the family of the 250 Catholic bishops in Rome that ended Saturday. A year ago, German Cardinal Walter Kasper called on the church to change—to welcome homosexual couples, and...

Three months ago, this writer sent out a column entitled, “Could Trump Win?” meaning the Republican nomination.  Today even the Trump deniers concede the possibility.  And the emerging question has become: “Can Trump be stopped? And if so, where, and by whom?” Consider the catbird seat in which The Donald sits. An average of national...

Barack Obama sought as his legacy to bring an end to the two longest wars in U.S. history. On Oct. 15, he, again, admitted failure. The 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan will remain another year. And, on Inauguration Day 2017, 5,500 U.S. troops will still be there. Why cannot we leave? Because, if we do,...

The honor of it all aside, Rep. Paul Ryan would do well to decline the speakership of the House. For it is a poisoned chalice that is being offered to him. The Republican Party is not, as some commentators wail, in “chaos” today. It is in rebellion, in revolt, as it was in the early...

“Seems the more people you kill, the more you are in the limelight.” That blog post on the email address of Oregon mass-murderer Christopher Harper-Mercer was made after Vester Lee Flanagan shot and killed that Roanoke TV reporter and her cameraman. “I have noticed,” said the blog post, “that people like [Flanagan] are all alone...

Having established a base on the Syrian coast, Vladimir Putin last week began air strikes on ISIS and other rebel forces seeking to overthrow Bashar Assad. A longtime ally of Syria, Russia wants to preserve its toehold on the Mediterranean, help Assad repel the threat, and keep the Islamic terrorists out of Damascus. Russia is...

“Do you realize now what you have done?” So Vladimir Putin in his U.N. address summarized his indictment of a U.S. foreign policy that has produced a series of disasters in the Middle East that we did not need the Russian leader to describe for us. Fourteen years after we invaded Afghanistan, Afghan troops are...

Pope Francis’s four-day visit to the United States was by any measure a personal and political triumph. The crowds were immense, and coverage of the Holy Father on television and in the print press swamped the state visit of Xi Jinping, the leader of the world’s second-greatest power. But how enduring, and how relevant, was...

Beliefs matter. “Ideas Have Consequences,” as conservative scholar Richard Weaver wrote in his classic of that title in 1948. Yet, for so believing, and so saying, Dr. Ben Carson has been subjected to a Rodney King-style night-sticking by the P.C. police. Asked by Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” whether he could support a Muslim...

During the 1950s, the twin pillars of worldwide anti-communism were Dwight Eisenhower’s America and the Roman Catholic Church of Pope Pius XII. During the 1980s, the last decade of the Cold War, Ronald Reagan and the Polish pope, John Paul II, were the pillars of resistance. When Pope Francis arrives in Washington on Tuesday afternoon,...

What Vladimir Putin is up to in Syria makes far more sense than what Barack Obama and John Kerry appear to be up to in Syria. The Russians are flying transports bringing tanks and troops to an air base near the coastal city of Latakia to create a supply chain to provide a steady flow...

With that kumbayah moment at the Capitol in South Carolina, when the Battle Flag of the Confederacy was lowered forever to the cheers and tears of all, a purgation of the detestable relics of evil that permeate American public life began. City leaders in Memphis plan to dig up the body of Confederate General Nathan...

“If the law supposes that, the law is a ass—a idiot.” Charles Dickens gave that line to Mr. Bumble in “Oliver Twist.” And it sums up the judgment of Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis about the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, which said the 14th Amendment guarantees same-sex couples the right to marry. Davis refused to...

“Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide,” wrote James Burnham in his 1964 Suicide of the West. Burnham predicted that the mindless magnanimity of liberals, who subordinate the interests of their own people and nations to utopian and altruistic impulses, would bring about an end to Western civilization. Was he wrong? Consider what is happening...

Barack Obama, as chief law enforcement officer of the United States, is going to have to stop acting like a conscientious objector in this war on cops. Wednesday, another officer, in Fox Lake, Illinois, Lt. Charles “GI Joe” Gliniewicz, was gunned down. Last Friday, Darren Goforth, a Houston deputy sheriff, was shot 15 times by...

Ten weeks before the first U.S.-Soviet summit ever held in Moscow, in May 1972, North Vietnam, with Soviet-supplied armor and artillery, crossed the DMZ in an all-out offensive to overrun the South. President Nixon responded with air and naval strikes on the North. Yet Nixon went to Moscow and signed the first strategic arms agreement...

The Wednesday morning murders of 24-year-old Roanoke TV reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, were a racist atrocity, a hate crime. Were they not white, they would be alive today. Their killer, Vester L. Flanagan II, said as much in his farewell screed. He ordered his murder weapon, he said, two days after...

Since China devalued its currency 3 percent, global markets have gone into a tailspin. Why should this be? After all, 3 percent devaluation in China could be countered by a U.S. tariff of 3 percent on all goods made in China, and the tariff revenue used to cut U.S. corporate taxes. The crisis in world...

While perhaps too early for Democratic elites to panic and begin bailing out on Hillary Clinton’s campaign as a doomed vessel, they would be well advised not to miss any of the lifeboat drills. For Hillary’s campaign is taking on water at a rate that will sink her, if the leakage does not stop, and...

“Trump’s immigration proposals are as dangerous as they are stunning,” railed amnesty activist Frank Sharry. “Trump . . . promises to rescind protections for Dreamers and deport them. He wants to redefine the constitutional definition of U.S. citizenship as codified by the 14th Amendment. He plans to impose a moratorium on legal immigration.” While Sharry...

In the Cleveland debate, Donald Trump refused to commit to support whomever the Republican Party nominates in 2016. Trump would be wise to maintain his freedom of action. For there is a plot afoot in The Washington Post Conservative Club to purge Trump from the Republican Party before the primaries begin. “A political party has...

If his Republican opponents will not take down Donald Trump, Fox News will not only show them how it is done. Fox News will do the job for them. That is the message that came out loud and clear from last Thursday’s debate in Cleveland, which was viewed by the largest cable audience ever to...

In his desperation to sink the Iran nuclear deal, Bibi Netanyahu is taking a hellish gamble. Israel depends upon the United States for $3 billion a year in military aid and diplomatic cover in forums where she is often treated like a pariah state. Israel has also been the beneficiary of almost all the U.S....

In his new biography Being Nixon: A Man Divided, Evan Thomas concedes a point. Richard Nixon, he writes, “was not paranoid; the press and the ‘Georgetown set’ really were out to get him.” Carl Bernstein’s review found Thomas’ book deficient in its failure to chronicle the “endemic criminality” of the Nixon presidency. Yet, recent revelations...

All through the Cold War, the Turks were among America’s most reliable allies. After World War II, when Stalin encroached upon Turkey and Greece, Harry Truman came to the rescue. Turkey reciprocated by sending thousands of troops to fight alongside our GIs in Korea. Turkey joined NATO and let the U.S. station Jupiter missiles in...

The American political class has failed the country, and should be fired. That is the clearest message from the summer surge of Bernie Sanders and the remarkable rise of Donald Trump. Sanders’ candidacy can trace it roots back to the 19th-century populist party of Mary Elizabeth Lease who declaimed: “Wall Street owns the country. It...

“If God does not exist, then everything is permissible.” Ivan Karamazov’s insight came to mind while watching the video of Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood describe, as she sipped wine and tasted a salad, how she harvests the organs of aborted babies for sale to select customers. “Yesterday was the first time … people wanted...