Bismarck said that politics is the art of the possible. It looks like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and other Democrats regard politics as the art of intransigence. In his brief remarks Saturday on border security, Donald Trump outlined a plan that made multiple concessions to Democratic desiderata in
A few days ago, American Greatness published some thoughts of mine about Jonah Goldberg’s contention that “President Trump is not a man of good character” and that, consequently, his administration “will end poorly.” “Character,” Jonah says, “is destiny.” Trump’s character is bad. Therefore his destiny is grim. While acknowledging that the president is
Mark the uncanny hand of coincidence. When I began thinking about putting together a conference about the legacy of Russell Kirk last spring, I knew that we were in the middle of his centenary. We wanted to take advantage of that milestone, so we determined to hold the conference sometime in the autumn.
My friend Jonah Goldberg has prompted me to think a bit about the issue of character as it relates to public service. Jonah thinks that Donald Trump is a man of bad character. He’s written this several times, most recently, I believe, at National Review where he puts it negatively: it is an
A major reason that George H. W. Bush was elected in 1988 was his pledge, dramatically enunciated at the Republican National Convention in August of that year, not to raise taxes. Congress will push me to raise taxes, said Bush, and I’ll say “no”; they’ll push again, and I’ll say “no”; and they’ll
Déjà-vu all over again. I have always admired that mot attributed to the philosopher Yogi Berra. And I think that if you look around at the latest episodes in the long-running, off-off Broadway entertainment “Get Trump” you’ll like it too. After all, this last week or so brought a veritable tsunami of déjà-vuable
Like a long-running entertainment, the Boy Scout Show, starring the lugubrious Robert Mueller as the big bully himself, is back. Off the air for some months as the people who brought you “Senator Spartacus Battles Brett Kavanaugh” and “Midterm Mayhem,” along with a special workshop on “How Democrats Can Manufacture Ballots at the
There was a daytime television show I remember from my youth called “Queen for a Day.” It had three essential features. Hard luck stories from a handful of women. Loot in the form of kitchen appliances, nights on the town, fashionable clothes, etc. And the central gimmick: the applause meter, through which the
The world is divided into two classes of people: those who think that CNN’s Jim Acosta is “rude” and a “terrible person” and Jim Acosta. Supporting the former opinion are episodes like Wednesday’s press conference at the White House at which Acosta once again played his version of charades, acting out the word
The eternal return—Friedrich Nietzsche thought the idea was horrifying. Life as an endless merry-go-round in which the same things keep recurring, forever. That prospect, Nietzsche thought, was the hardest, weightiest, most depressing idea mankind could ever confront. It was part of Nietzsche’s blustering nihilism that he should first conjure the most unpleasant idea
