“April is the cruelest month,” wrote T. S. Eliot in the opening line of what is regarded as his greatest poem, “The Waste Land.” For President Joe Biden, the cruelest month is surely August of 2021, which is now mercifully ending. When has a president had a worse month? On the last Sunday in August,...
A devastating leftist critique of Mark Levin’s bestselling book American Marxism was posted by Zachary Petrizzo at Salon the other day. After reading Petrizzo’s remarks, I am left wondering about the colossal foolishness of Levin, who set out to write a book—which his celebrity would push to the top of the New York Times best seller list—on something it seems he never bothered...
Say what you will about President Joe Biden, he has stuck to his guns on ending America’s 20-year involvement in Afghanistan’s forever war. His decision not to delay our departure after Aug. 31 was fortified by hard intel that the terrorist ISIS-K was preparing attacks at Kabul airport. Thursday evening, the two bomb attacks occurred....
I’ve just learned I may be a terrorist. On Aug. 13, the Secretary of Homeland Security issued a statement warning about an increase in domestic and foreign terrorism. At the end of the document’s summary were these words: “Such threats are also exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing global pandemic, including grievances...
Why did the modernized Afghan army lose so spectacularly to the Taliban after so much training and material support from the United States? One emerging talking point among British and American pundits is that the United States failed to provide sufficient air power. While it is true that U.S. airpower could have aided the Afghan...
Disgraced Andrew Cuomo abandoned the New York governor’s mansion last week, leaving nearly 15,000 dead nursing home residents in his wake as a result of a catastrophic executive order forcing their facilities to take in COVID-19-infected patients. He also left behind a bevy of female underlings with a mountain of sordid sexual harassment allegations. And,...
A 60-something French Intellectual Takeout reader and I began an email correspondence a few years ago. We lost touch in recent months, but when I learned of the severe COVID-19 restrictions being enforced in France, I reestablished contact to get her impressions. “I belong to the vax and health pass resistant group,” Marie wrote, “and though not being...
As President Lyndon Johnson and the best and brightest of the 1960s were broken on the wheel of Vietnam, the Biden presidency may well be broken on the wheel of the Taliban’s triumph in Afghanistan. Less than a week into the chaotic U.S. withdrawal at Hamid Karzai International Airport, a CBS poll found that Americans,...
A is for Afghanistan. A faraway, hardcore Muslim country that remains utterly mysterious to our political, intelligence, and military elites even after two decades of intervention. Between October 2001 and August 2021 America squandered more than $2 trillion and more than 2,000 lives for no clear objective or tangible benefit. B is for the Washington Beltway. The home of...
In Afghanistan, the mission failure appears complete. The trillion-dollar project to plant Western democracy in a Muslim nation historically fabled for driving out imperial intruders has crashed and burned after 20 years, and the Taliban are suddenly back in power. After investing scores of billions in training and arming a force of 350,000 Afghani troops,...
In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter poses this riddle: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” After some further conversation, the Hatter asks Alice: ‘Have you guessed the riddle yet?’… ‘No, I give it up,’ Alice replied. ‘What’s the answer?’ ‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said the Hatter. We’ve seen...
In 1957, the supposedly backward Soviet Union launched a satellite into orbit and the threat of Soviet rockets became real for millions of Americans. Fortunately, the Sputnik moment galvanized a massive American response and we soon caught up and overtook the Soviets. Conceivably, the current collapse of our Afghanistan adventure might be a similar “Sputnik...
The first returns from the delayed census of 2020 are in, and they have made for celebratory headlines in the mainstream media. Big takeaway: Between 2010 and 2021, the white American population declined in real and relative terms, with more deaths than live births, as the white share of the U.S. population fell from 63...
In the months before COVID hit, a number of my friends began a new phase of motherhood by starting careers as homeschool teachers. They expressed normal trepidation, concerned they would fail, and by extension, their children would. Then the pandemic hit, homeschooling became the new way of life, and my friends were suddenly homeschool veterans,...
In April, President Joe Biden told the nation he would have all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack ever on the continental United States. Given the turn of events of the past week, that 20th anniversary may be celebrated by a triumphant Taliban, now on...
As of Thursday morning, August 12 the Taliban were in control of eleven provincial capitals in Afghanistan, including the important northeastern city of Kunduz, following a sweep across the north of the country in recent days. The insurgents encountered minimal resistance from the Afghan National Army. The insurgents now have their sights on Mazar-i-Sharif, the largest city in the mostly...
Suddenly, Sunday, a riveting report came over cable news: The U.S. embassy was urging all Americans to “leave Afghanistan as soon as possible.” Message: Get out while you can. Adding urgency was news that three northern provincial capitals, including Kunduz city, had fallen to the Taliban, making it five provincial capitals overrun since Friday. The...
I have just completed a three-week tour of Europe starting from a home base in Switzerland to southern Germany, thence to the south of France, and finally to northern Italy. Each of these places is unique. Each is delightful in its own way, rich in culture and history, a pleasure to be in. The food...
An uneasy relationship with the truth seems especially prevalent in America’s most prestigious schools. Ambitious academics quickly realize that upward mobility requires a knack for convincing deceit. Long gone are the days when brilliant scholarship was the ticket to moving up the ladder. The provost who can say with a straight face, “all of our...
Many people seem to be wondering what will become of the human soul in another world. I am wondering what has become of the human mind in this world. G.K. Chesterton wrote those words almost a century ago in his essay, “The Rout of Reason.” I find myself wondering the same thing on this August...
A week ago, the MT Mercer Street, a Japanese-owned tanker managed by a U.K.-based company owned by Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer, sailing in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Oman, was struck by drones. A British security guard and Romanian crew member were killed. Britain and the U.S. immediately blamed Iran, and the Israelis...
Conservatives are malcontents who feel alienated from an American politics and culture controlled by the left, Zack Beauchamp declares in a recent Vox article entitled “The anti-American right.” Such dissatisfaction has most recently manifested itself during the Olympics, Beauchamp declares, as these conservatives have even dared to root against Olympic contenders technically representing the U.S. but spewing hatred for...
One year ago, I lost a friend, a good man who was driven to his untimely death by the wicked words and deeds of people determined to ruin his life if they could. People who loathed him—without knowing him in any meaningful human way—simply because he disagreed with their beliefs about political, cultural, and philosophical matters. It...
Despite repeated claims to the contrary by American elites, slavery is not a uniquely American, or even a uniquely white enterprise. Peoples of all nations and colors have engaged in the institution throughout history. One such example is easily found in the compelling history of the Seminole people. Joseph Cotto, of Cotto/Gottfried podcast fame, has self-published an...
Never have so many won so many accolades for so few real achievements on the world stage. That about sums up the Olympics 2021 — or, as I call them, the O-limp-ics 2021. Indeed, the time has come to retire the hallowed motto of the Games: “Faster, Higher, Stronger.” In our modern age, it’s: “Woker,...
Just seven weeks into his presidency, Joe Biden signed a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill. Among the largest spending bills in history, it was passed without the vote of a single Republican. The plan sent direct payments of up to $1,400 to most Americans, extended a $300 per week unemployment insurance boost until Sept. 6...
On July 24 we learned that Rodney James Alcala, the so-called “The Dating Game Killer,” died at age 77 of natural causes. Alcala was given that name because in 1978 he appeared on The Dating Game television program, just at the same time he was carrying out a killing spree that included at least five known and...
For years conservative movement figures have engaged in “value talk,” a rhetorical means of winning acceptance for pet causes that often have little to do with conservatism or traditional morality. Such value talk has often been used as a way of prodding Washington into foreign entanglements. Leon Aron’s recent article for The Dispatch, “Welcome to the new Cold War”...
Becoming Elisabeth Elliot, by Ellen Vaughn (B&H Books; 320 pp., $24.99). This is the official biography of the wife of famed missionary martyr Jim Elliot, who was killed along with four other missionaries while attempting to bring the Gospel to a group of savage natives in the South American jungle during the mid-1950s. Elliot was...
In this sequel to his groundbreaking 1941 analysis of world politics, The Managerial Revolution, James Burnham introduced a group of 20th-century, mainly Italian, political scientists bound by a concept that has come to be called “elite theory”: to wit, that all societies are run by and for the benefit of their elites, rather than by...
“After the quiet 1950s…incidents of political violence again became more frequent and now we may be in the middle of another wave of sociopolitical instability.” Thus five years ago wrote Peter Turchin, a University of Connecticut professor specializing in “historical social science,” a.k.a. Cliodynamics. After 2020’s violent nationwide political protests and the pandemic’s destruction of...
In his final state of the nation speech Monday, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte defended his refusal to confront China over Beijing’s seizure and fortification of his country’s islets in the South China Sea. “It will be a massacre if I go and fight a war now,” said Duterte. “We are not yet a competent and...
Recent debates over what to do about Cuba remain afflicted by myths, many going back to the origins of the Castros’ Communist regime. There have generally been two conflicting accounts of how this regime was established and its relation to the Cuban past, and both may need to be corrected. Some of the most childish...
The Republican Party has long sung the refrain of limited government and free markets, reprimanding their constituents about the dangers of intervening in the economy. Big government and boycotts, they say, are for Democrats—we may not like what private companies do, but, hey, that’s capitalism! All of that, of course, is a lie, or at...
If you’re tired of the pandemic and just want to go back to normal, David Frum at The Atlantic has news for you: It’s all the stupid people who refuse to take the vaccine that are prolonging our COVID misery. Oh, wait, that’s not it exactly. In actuality, it’s all Trump’s fault, Frum, once a leading voice of...
When I went to pick up my laundry last week, one of the employees, who had just finished folding my clothes, began weeping. “This is the last load I’ll ever do here,” she said in a choked voice. “They’re letting us all go.” That one little stifled sob described more than just one woman bemoaning...
It seems there’s no sanctuary from draconian mask and vaccine mandates. You can’t get on a plane, go to school, work at a hospital, perform onstage, compete in sports, exercise at a gym, worship in church or walk outside without the long shadows of Big Pharma and the COVID-19 control freaks looming over every aspect...
If there are two sports more ferociously woke than NBA basketball and women’s professional soccer, I am unaware of their existence. Unfortunately for athletes in these two sports, their commitment to wokeness and the language of equity is increasingly backfiring, so much so that I have found their recent Olympic adventures delectable. They are so...
To understand what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s select committee investigation of the Capitol Hill events of Jan. 6 is all about, a good place to begin is with the sentencing hearing last week of Paul Hodgkins. A crane operator from Tampa, Florida, Hodgkins, 38, pleaded guilty to a single count of obstructing a joint session...
These are not easy times for those cherishing political sanity. Barely a day passes without some stupidity drawing the “What can these idiots be thinking?” response. How is one to respond to demands that drag queens be allowed to read to toddlers at public libraries or that boys must be permitted to compete in girls’...
On July 21, President Joe Biden held a townhall in Cincinnati, taking questions from gushingly friendly CNN “journalists.” The room in which he spoke was half empty. From all appearances, Biden confirmed the suspicions of his critics that he is failing mentally and that what his “advisers” told him to say parroted the views of the left...
There is a global movement to remove the residues of Western imperialism from society, one seen in the toppling of monuments dedicated to Western explorers and statesmen. Activists also assert that developing countries must be permitted to chart a new course without cultural interference from the West. Yet this assertion breaks down when it comes...
Seven months after the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy, at American University, laid out his view on how the East-West struggle should be conducted to avoid a catastrophic war that could destroy us both. Kennedy’s message to Moscow and his fellow Americans: “If (the United States and the Soviet Union) cannot end now...
If you’ve been watching closely, you may have seen a number of fault lines widening in the COVID pandemic narrative. These fault lines are vindicating for those convinced of the underhanded dealings of pandemic authorities for many months, and horrifying for those realizing their trust and confidence in authorities was betrayed. Regardless of which camp...
“F” is for failure. Last week, I happened upon an article reporting over 40 percent of Baltimore’s high school students had a 1.0 grade point average or less. In other words, 40 percent of these students were practically flunking their course load. That shocking figure led me to look at statistics from U.S. News and World Report, compiled before...
Armed with a $2 billion war chest, the Capitol Police announced its plan to open field offices outside Washington for the first time. New imperial outposts are planned in California and Florida, with more to come across the country as the Capitol Police intend to monitor Americans from sea to shining sea. As part of this change in mission,...
The following are excerpts translated from my latest interview with Sputnik News, which was broadcast live on July 19. Q:… What is happening to the freedom of speech in America? Are the current powers-that-be using secret services against journalists deemed troublesome, such as Tucker Carlson? … ST: Tucker Carlson’s evening show is the only mainstream media program...
Article IV of the Constitution addresses the obligations of the federal government to the state governments that were being asked to surrender aspects of their sovereignty to form our new Union. “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” reads Article IV, “and shall protect each of...
Decades before the electronic media giants rose to their dizzying heights of power and began canceling those whom they decided to bully, a man named Leopold Tyrmand, the future founder of Chronicles magazine, exposed the false self-image of the media as they claimed to defend our freedoms, when they were really aiming for absolute social control. Today,...
How can we drive a stake through the heart of Critical Race Theory (CRT)? Ultimately, this will require a long march to restore sanity to thousands of elected school boards, and the firing of countless misguided ideologues. But what about the short run? How can we prevent this poison from damaging an entire generation? Forget...