Retired Admiral William McRaven’s recent opinion column in the New York Times is one of several recent indicators of how anti-republican (note the small “r”) our military leadership has become. First, as Brandon J. Weichert so ably pointed out in these pages the other day, the military’s pathetic conduct in response to a predictable and
From the time of Augustus Caesar until Constantine, the Roman emperor was protected by a corps of soldiers known as the Praetorian Guard. Over time, the Praetorians became the real power in Rome, appointing and deposing emperors at will. In our time, praetorianism has come to mean despotic military rule, something associated with countries in
Dear Mr. Brin: Fifty years ago this week, when I was a 21-year-old college senior, I was in the Soviet Union, sent by the government of Israel to smuggle in Jewish religious items and smuggle out names of Jews who wanted to escape the Soviet Union and could then be issued a formal invitation to
Reason, wrote John Locke, is man’s “only Star and compass.” It will bring those who but consult it to the table of amity, where they will consent to create a more peaceful society. Reason is Locke’s nisus, the perfective urge and final cause of his treatises on civil government. And yet the nature of that
“Encore, c'est la meme chose” means “Again, it's the same thing.” Or as the American meme puts it, “same stuff, different day.” Actually, that's the cleaned-up version. You can guess which word to substitute for “stuff.” The point is that similar social problems occur again and again across time and space. First-World Drugs The U.S.
Two suggested additions to our political taxonomy. We’re familiar with the “NeverTrumper.” He’s a public person on the Right whose principles are ever-so-refined. Somehow, though, in the refining process, those principles finally coalesced around blind resentment of a single individual. The NeverTrumper is a curiosity of the current moment in time. One day he’ll end
Long revered by their grateful countrymen, the Founders recently have become more ambiguous figures in American life. A central premise of the Left is that American history is a story of oppression and that the Founders are tainted, being memorable chiefly because some of them owned slaves. In opposition, the NeverTrump GOP imagines itself to
It was an ordinary event when the first black slaves arrived in the Virginia colony in 1619. Subjection and force were the way of the world. It wasn’t just that nigh all mankind practiced slavery—that the African enslaved and sold his brothers to the European, that the Arab, the Comanche, and the Melanesian all slaved,
The more civilized and cultured we humans get, the more we tend to conflate means with ends. For instance—the First Amendment was meant to as a means to ensure the ability for citizens to openly criticize other citizens and the government so that we could identify and address potential problems impairing the security and happiness
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves
