The One Certain Thing, by Peter Cooley (Carnegie Mellon University Press; 80 pp., $15.95). In “This Living Hand: A Visitation,” a poem from this outstanding testimony to a husband’s love for his wife and grief at her death, Peter Cooley writes about the crosses each wore. “Before they took your body to be burned/I scooped yours from...
Yesterday I was tapping away on the laptop when through the window I saw a young man walking up the drive toward the house. He was shirtless, wearing jeans and brogans—do they still call work boots by this name?—and I correctly assumed he was one of the crew repaving the driveway of the house across...
There is a beautiful conservatory in my hometown that houses flower gardens year-round despite our chilly northern clime. Its soaring glass dome was built in 1915 and gracefully presides over a beautiful pond and manicured grounds in a stately way reminiscent of the Capitol dome. Several years ago, the park hosting the conservatory must have...
Traveling to Philadelphia Tuesday, President Joe Biden laid out in apocalyptic terms the gravity of the “threat” to American democracy from Republican efforts to reform and rewrite state election laws. We are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That’s not hyperbole. Since the Civil War. The Confederates back then...
What do super rich people with multi-million dollar summer homes in the Hamptons and similar enclaves think about today’s troubled, often violent politics? Frank answers are seldom forthcoming given that an impolite answer might invite social ostracism and exclusion from A-list parties. But actions often speak louder than words, and a recent article in AVENUE lets the...
Dear Members of Congress: Some of you who are doing your duty in representing your constituents need not pay attention to this letter. You know who you are. For the rest of you, I have a question: Where in the name of our country are you people? Since Jan. 20, we’ve had a crisis at...
Who Is My Neighbor? An Anthology in Natural Relations, by Thomas Achord and Darrell Dow (584 pp., $24.99). The headmaster of a classical Christian school has teamed up with a statistician to collect and sort thousands of quotations pertaining to human relationships from myriad religious, political, and historic figures. The result is an invaluable reference for patriots...
When students hear me introduce No Country for Old Men as a deeply political novel with a right-wing position on contemporary American society, those who have seen the film adaptation by the Coen brothers perhaps wonder if the movie and the Cormac McCarthy novel are unrelated entities that just happen to bear the same title. What they...
I sent a simple request in April to my government for public data that taxpayers have the right to see. Through the federal Freedom of Information Act, I asked the Transportation Security Administration (as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation) for the following information: No. 1: The policy statement outlining the processes and criteria...
Are the Democrats headed for their Little Bighorn, with President Joe Biden as Col. Custer? The wish, you suggest, is father to the thought. Yet, consider. On taking office, Biden held a winning hand. Three vaccines, with excellent efficacy rates, had been created and were being administered at a rate of a million shots a...
Lately I’ve been hearing from colleagues and friends that Leo Strauss helped birth neoconservatism and that Straussianism and neoconservatism belong together rhetorically and conceptually. Supposedly neoconservatism would not have existed in the form in which it took over the conservative movement in the 1980s if Strauss had not provided its essential ideas. Thus, so goes...
Few notice what is taught in school until it is too late. Today’s push for Critical Race Theory (CRT) is extraordinarily ambitious, and it is hard for defenders of traditional education to imagine anything more toxic than this theory that has seemingly burst on the scene. But, as bad as it may seem, CRT is...
I’m 70 years old, 5’7”, and a bit past my ideal measurement on the Body Mass Index. Let’s say I wake up tomorrow morning, look at myself in the mirror, and suddenly decide I’m capable of hitting three pointers in the National Basketball Association. I see myself soaring through the air like Michael Jordan, ball...
There are at least three reasons why I rejoiced, together with some sixty million Italians spread all over the world, at their soccer team’s victory over England in the 2020 European Championship finals. First and foremost, the winning Italian team was almost entirely composed of those who are Italian by blood and heritage: here they are,...
As in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973, the year our prisoners of war came home, America did not lose a major battle in Afghanistan. Yet we did not win the war. South Vietnam was lost. And contrary to the message awaiting President George W. Bush when he landed on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which...
Members of the establishment conservative media are wimps when it comes to responding to the left’s accusations about white American “systemic racism.” Whether it’s refusing to stand for the national anthem at sports events, substituting the Black National Anthem for the Star-Spangled Banner on PBS, announcing fireworks shows on Independence Day are a “racist” activity, or...
This extraordinary tome proposes a cure for our cultural illness: the resurgence of the muscular Christianity that once permeated higher education. The success of Fulton Brown’s project is far from assured, but in this essay collection she embraces the task with zealous ecstasy. The book is ostensibly the story of the author’s unlikely relationship with Milo...
The effort to make sports unwatchable for most fans continues at light-speed. What started as a handful of radical NFL players kneeling during the national anthem transformed in the blink of an eye into an organized NFL-wide ceremonial genuflection to BLM. The woke virus quickly infected the NBA, too. Only the threat of revenue loss pushed owners...
Many of my grandkids love knock-knock jokes, but the younger members of the gang don’t quite grasp the concept. They get the “Knock-Knock” part correct, but the rest of the joke falls pancake flat, as in: “Knock-knock.” “Who’s there?” “Sally.” “Sally who?” “Sally I don’t know who.” In their defense, let me add these kids...
In the late 19th century, adventure and science fiction writer Jules Verne repeatedly praised Americans’ ingenuity, inventiveness, and strong work ethic. Both in the crafting of his characters and his descriptions of Americans generally, the French author exhibited a remarkable appreciation for this people’s attitudes and contributions to the world, sometimes to extremes. Take, for instance, From...
Hide and seek should be a game for children, not for ruthless feds. But here we are. An American citizen, innocent until proven guilty, is fighting for his freedom against a government juggernaut hell-bent on framing him as a violent Jan. 6 insurrectionist. One crucial key to clearing his name, his lawyer argues, lies in...
Don’t look now, but “lookism” may be the next politically incorrect thing you are guilty of. The latest installment of our nation’s utopian quest, “lookism” is defined as “the discriminatory treatment of people who are considered physically unattractive.” To be sure, beauty is always culturally defined, and hard to quantify precisely, but in today’s America...
Just two hours from where I sit writing this lies a battlefield where 50,000 American men and boys were wounded, killed, captured, or went missing over the course of three days roughly 160 years ago. Several months later, that field became a cemetery dedicated by President Abraham Lincoln in his famous Gettysburg Address, and a federally...
As our July Fourth celebrations were beginning, the U.S. quietly closed and abandoned Bagram Air Base, the largest American military base between the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea. Afghan looters were soon seen scavenging inside the base. The long retreat of the American Empire is underway, and this longest war is likely to...
Another holiday overshadowed Independence Day this year. Black Independence Day, also known as “Juneteenth,” took center stage at PBS’s annual televised Fourth of July celebration, as singer Vanessa Williams performed “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the de facto Black National Anthem. “It’s in celebration of the wonderful opportunity that we now have to celebrate Juneteenth,”...
Joe Biden calls himself a “devout Catholic.” Sorry, Joe, but your claim is bogus and your hypocrisy rank, as can be seen in the whole recent communion controversy. That Catholic bishops shouldn’t have to deny Joe Biden communion because of his support for abortion, which the church considers a grave sin, is a point correctly...
Compared to today’s woke left, Hitler’s methods for seizing power look like something out of the technological Stone Age. This statement is not to dismiss the horrors unleashed by Nazi rule. It is rather to focus attention on how much easier it is for today’s totalitarians to operate compared with their musty-looking predecessors. The fashion...
Respect LBGT rights or get out of the EU, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte instructed Hungary’s Viktor Orban at last week’s gathering of the European Union in Brussels. According to Reuters, attendees described it as the “most intense personal clash among the bloc’s leaders in years.” What caused the clash? Hungary just passed a law...
On a beautiful Sunday morning, I was out of town for a business meeting in the city of Santa Barbara, California, an affluent area where the rich and famous live. Demographically, it isn’t exactly Wakanda. Before getting on the 101 Freeway for the long drive back to Los Angeles, I pulled into a gas station...
Thanks to Britney Spears’ court battles over her hard-earned fortune, more Americans than ever before are learning about how predatory lawyers, judges, doctors, conservators and guardians collaborate to defraud and destroy the lives of innocent victims. The 39-year-old Spears went public last week with her 13-year-long struggle against her father and court-appointed guardian Jamie Spears—who...
The Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969 were a great, good thing that signaled the beginning of the LGBTQ social and cultural movement, and only positive things flow from them—or so the narrative goes. The “gay liberation” rioters are our heroes and heroines, and police, government, and traditional public opinion, on the other hand, are...
In 1986, Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” That was 35 years ago, and I’d like to suggest a nine-word update: “I’m woke, and I’m here to change the world.” The woke folks suck the fun out of everything,...
Late last year I wrote how a personal bout with COVID-19 changed my perspective and gave me hope that the pandemic wasn’t as dire as many made it out to be. My perspective changed in part thanks to a private practice doctor who had great success in treating COVID. According to him, COVID, if treated...
About that clash between a British destroyer and Russian warplanes and warships in the Black Sea last week there are conflicting versions. The Kremlin version is the more dramatic. HMS Defender, says Moscow, entered the Black Sea, made port in Odessa, Ukraine, and then sailed for Batumi on the coast of Georgia. However, the British...
Distinctions between the First, Second, and Third Worlds have blurred in contemporary America as government competence stretches in odd and tyrannical directions while leaving the basic functions of government untouched. This misalignment of priorities could well serve to delegitimize the government in the eyes of many of its citizens. The post-WWII political landscape was simple....
Joseph Bolanos’ reputation as a pillar of New York City’s Upper West Side community was shredded in February when FBI agents and heavily armed police raided his mother’s apartment where Bolanos was spending the night. They handcuffed him while other agents battered down the door to his home and kept him in the street in...
As soon as I heard that a man had stabbed three women to death and wounded seven others in the Bavarian town of Würzburg on June 25, I was near-certain of three key facts of the case: that the attacker was a Muslim, that the powers-that-be would claim to be mystified as to his motives,...
On Tuesday, Brooklyn Borough President and former police captain Eric Adams took the lead in the New York mayoral race with 32 percent of the Democratic primary vote, 10 points more than progressive Maya Wiley, who had the endorsement of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. How did Adams beat the elite? Said The New York Times: Adams...
We are living in a political culture in which anyone identified with the now-vaguely-defined “right” can lose his fortune, reputation, and possibly his freedom. Meanwhile, the racist, vandalizing left can do what it wants with total impunity. A professor lecturing at the Yale School of Medicine dreamt aloud about “shooting white people,” and has not suffered...
(This article is a translation of an original interview by Branimir Stanić and Ivan Tašev) Earlier this month Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán—long maligned by the Brussels machine as an authoritarian reactionary inside the ever-so-progressive European Union—gave an interview to the Croatian Catholic weekly Glas Koncila (The Voice of the Council, 20 June 2021). Orbán made several...
As the decay of America’s urban centers continues, Milwaukee, Wisconsin has experienced a nearly 200 percent increase in car thefts this year, prompting city council members to take action. But rather than calling for more police officers, or even the left’s preferred curative of social workers, to be hired, Alderman Khalif Rainey and Alderwoman Milele Coggs wrote...
A good historical novel—as Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche is—resembles a bridge game, where the hands and strategies are revealed only gradually. History itself unfolds irregularly, with disruptions, false starts, and surprises. Against the backdrop of complicated, vicious, and corrosive events in France in the late 1780s and early 1790s, Sabatini draws his characters from smallscale lives into the...
As disruptive as the 2020/2021 academic year was, it led to many positive educational changes that will be transformative and long-lasting. Most notably, parents have been re-empowered to take back the reins of their children’s education from government bureaucrats and teachers unions. Frustrated by school closures and district “Zoom schooling,” families fled public schools in droves...
If there were a Museum of Terrible Ideas, the permanent collection would surely include today’s elected leaders who believe the best way to represent impoverished neighborhoods is to demand the defunding of police departments and supporting policies to undermine public schools. How can anyone argue that poor people benefit from lax law enforcement or ending...
Another weekend, another round of shootings. We’ve only just hit the summer solstice and we’re already off to the races of chaos and crime. Per usual, the biggest rampage came from Chicago, where 54 people were shot over the weekend, 21 on Saturday night alone. But Chicago is not the only city having problems. A recent...
Last week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted 168-55, more than 3-1, to provide new guidance for receiving Holy Communion. Behind the decision? Bishops’ alarm that the public religious practice of President Joe Biden is conveying a heretical message to the faithful and the nation. At Sunday Mass, Biden regularly receives Communion. Yet he...
Hitler’s Germany attacked Stalin’s Soviet Union 80 years ago today, thus unleashing the greatest, bloodiest, and most meaningless clash of titans in history. Thanks to the German Führer’s obsession with Lebensraum (“Living Space”) in the East, and his equally self-defeating, criminal race theory, Operation Barbarossa resulted in the mutual near-destruction of the two nations. Flawed from the outset,...
Quaker’s “Aunt Jemima” has been replaced by the Pearl Milling Company. “Mrs. Butterworth” and “Uncle Ben” have followed her into the dustbin of history, all because these venerable product images ran afoul of current ideological purity tests. Woke ideology is rolling like an avalanche through corporate America, and removing these objectionable products is one of the chief ways these...
TANSTAAFL with its triple repetition of the letter “A” is an acronym popularized by science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein meaning, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” TANSTAFL with a double A is my play on Heinlein’s contrivance: “There ain’t no such thing as free love.” Free love may bring to mind that term...
Father. Now there’s a word weighted with meaning. For Americans indoctrinated in gender politics, father brings to mind the patriarchy, male domination, and oppression. For others, the word father summons nightmares from childhood, abuse, slaps and punches, drunken rages, constant criticism, and neglect. Or maybe they remember Dad as the man who would come home...