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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 brightness of a good idea is no less blinding than the darkness of a bad ideology. Either can enrapture the mind with visions of […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]