One of the most revealing moments of Donald Trump’s presidency so far went completely unnoted. “We all learned a lot,” he said following his recent discussion with the nation’s governors, which centered on his well-publicized support for arming qualified public teachers and staff. Speaking of the sheriffs who held back from entering Marjory
In January I was invited to address the City Tavern Club on the occasion of the club’s annual Reagan Dinner. This year it was a particular honor because it was the 30th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s last full year in office. We remember Reagan as an inspirational, optimistic figure who oversaw great
President Trump heeded the urgings of his putative friends and vociferous foes for a uniting speech to Congress. The nags got what they deserved: Trump’s statesmanlike analysis of the stasis, or gridlock, that infects Washington. The most successful partisanship is that which has the patina of nonpartisanship. Americans have always despised parties—understanding them
In Leviathan (1651), writing about the state of nature as war, Thomas Hobbes famously noted: “For War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known….so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but
Henry Olsen is in the front rank of American political analysts. His involvement in practical politics plus the depth of his scholarship allow him to see and grapple with questions other conservatives overlook. His spiritedness and defiance of conventional thinking earned him a regular column at American Greatness, where his insights should be
The often desperate measures foreigners take to enter our borders—crossing deserts being packed into trucks, and surviving unspeakable brutalities—rightly provoke our anger and evoke our pity. Because of the pathos involved in this kind of illegal entry, we often overlook the fact that there is a far safer and common way for would-be
This week marked the 154th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address and it reminds us that the liberty we enjoy has purposes that transcend the things we desire for ourselves. Biblical, philosophic, and political yearnings join in American public life. Our sacrifices, our duties today, unite us as Americans to the heroes of 1776,
Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 satiric novel about a fascist takeover, It Can’t Happen Here, has made a furious comeback at the expense of the maligned Donald Trump. That it is an act of supreme political ignorance for anyone to think Lewis’s novel somehow foreshadows the rise of Trump has not prevented such ignorance from manifesting
A recent West Point graduate, still serving in the U.S. Army, shocked admirers of the venerable American military academy with his candidly pro-Communist views. How could such an institution, founded on “duty, honor, country,” produce such a student? A junior Army officer who states his anti-American opinions so openly may seem novel, but
President Trump’s press conference in Puerto Rico made clear that whatever the island’s political designation may be, Puerto Ricans are Americans and he will act accordingly. The Commonwealth’s recovery—and not just from this hurricane—is part of the goal of making America great again. But the difficulties involved extend far beyond differences in political
