The Peace to Begin All Wars
It was a punitive peace, filled with malice and free of magnanimity. It was a victory as unchristian as it was uncharitable, enacted by moralists […]
A Blue Wave Is Not a Welcome Sight
No political loss is permanent, just as no political victory is a mandate for permanent rule. Let us remember this fact if or when a […]
On Not Missing Paul Ryan
Before Paul Ryan boxes up his library of P90X DVDs and paperback copies of the collected works of Ayn Rand, before he relinquishes his gavel […]
Facebook’s Book of Lies
What do you get when you intersperse the ominous-sounding narration of PBS’s “Frontline” with the patois of a (Silicon) Valley Girl, whose resume belies her […]
The Darkest Hour: Government by the Head of HR
When did private rules overrule public rights? When did the Department of Human Resources become more powerful than the Police Department, minus the right to […]
Give Max’s Foundering Memoir the Boot
I am more familiar with the work of Levi Strauss than I am the writings of Leo Strauss, except to say: where one made dungarees […]
Election Day Is No Day of Democracy
The confessional and the voting booth are the respective icons of religion and our civil religion: symbols of continuity—sacraments built to last—in which the former […]
Bubkes for Bubba: The End of Bill Clinton
If you want to see a political party cannibalize itself, if you want to hear how quickly hosannas become howls of outrage, look at—and listen […]
Smoking Elizabeth Warren’s Peace Pipe
About the laboratory that “analyzed” Elizabeth Warren’s DNA: the trailer with dented aluminum siding and dirt-covered windows, whose owner is a former osteopath and itinerant […]
A Trump Card of a Signature
Let Romeo and Juliet philosophize about the meaning of names and roses. Let the Montagues and Capulets wage their own Wars of the Roses, while […]
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hillary Clinton
Imagine sacrificing your personality for power. Imagine having to personify a stereotype, whose kitchen cabinet is just that: not a brain trust of domestic advisers, […]
The Absurdity of ‘The Man in the High Castle’
Look at our spacious skies, whose blessings we welcome and whose blights we fear, as Mother Nature is both the goddess of the fruited plain […]
Richard Blumenthal: Reporting for Duty
Psychological trauma does not need a physical trigger. You do not have to be an eyewitness to evil to testify to its effects. You do […]
Amazon’s River of Implacable Force and Inscrutable Intention
An illiterate society has no heart, while an innumerate one has no head. The two are a license for the few to experiment with the […]
The Crime of Certainty
The brightness of a good idea is no less blinding than the darkness of a bad ideology. Either can enrapture the mind with visions of […]
From the Living Constitution to the Invisible One
About that copy of the Constitution, the one written in invisible ink, where slander is lawful and silence is a form of self-incrimination, where speech […]
The Fight to Save Words from the #MeToo Censors of ‘Fighting Words’
Safe places are unsafe islands of the individual: an archipelago as disruptive as it is destructive, poisoning the grounds of our greatest institutions by encouraging […]
The Horror of the Swamp
Forget draining the swamp. Forget trying to conquer a city whose entrenchments and fortifications are more abstract than actual, whose spirit is as intemperate as […]
From Kava-can to Kava-naught: A Campaign of Personal Destruction
To believe the Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, every accusation against their enemies is true. Its truth is not a matter of evidence […]
Trudeau or Dare: Canada’s Betrayal of Its Indigenous Peoples
Despite a $2.1 billion renovation of the United Nations, despite the modernization of the grounds and headquarters, I fear the area is as physically toxic […]