A bulwark is a defensive wall, while The Bulwark is a wall against independent thought. Derivative, derogatory, and defamatory, the site has a logo that looks a lot like the emblem (since abandoned) of The New Republic: of a ship at sea, with its wind-puffed sails and its parallel pennants. But this ship is not that ship, not when it looks like a frigate and fights like a warship. The Bulwark attacks its enemies not by following the rules of war but by flouting them, by abandoning the law of the sea for piracy on the high seas, by forsaking all things nautical—including honor, history, customs, and tradition—for disastrous ends by despicable means.
It groups the supporters of Donald Trump with the secessionists and traitors who sanctioned the murder of Abraham Lincoln. It resurrects history by revising it, moving the capital of the Confederacy from Richmond, Virginia, to Charlottesville, Virginia, moving—by rhetorical sleight of hand—a statue of Jefferson Davis into the Rotunda designed by Thomas Jefferson, moving 62.9 million Americans from 30 states into 11 states of a dead country, founded by people long dead, for the restoration of an institution that will never rise from the dead. Such is the way of The Bulwark in which this ship morphs into a slave ship.
To accept this crime against history requires people not to study history, because the friends of Trump are the fans of Lincoln. We are the students of the last great historian of the president of the last best hope of earth. We read the works of Harry V. Jaffa, not the writings of racists and terrorists. We are all Jews, we are all Christians. We hate tyranny. We hate totalitarianism. We hate anti-Semitism.
The Bulwark is no bulwark against the world’s oldest hatred. It is more like a pleasure craft for a lost cause by a crew too indecent to do the decent thing: sail away.
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