Category: History And Its Making
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Para Bellum?
“If you want peace, prepare for war”. But only the nice kind of war, apparently. .
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Grabbing Straws
Big Left tries to build a new narrative for the Kirk murder.
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A List
It might be a short list.
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Just
Not long ago, in a discussion elsewhere, I mentioned that I have a hard time deciding who I dislike more in re the situation in the Middle East – the antisemitic right, or American liberal Christians with academic to-the-point-of-infantile interpretations of “Just War Doctrine”. Not much I can say or do about the former. But…
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Happy Reagan’s Birthday!
This is an update of a post I ran in 2014 Today would be Ronald Reagan’s 114th birthday. I’ve been writing about Reagan – who, along with PJ O’Rourke, Solzhenitzyn, Dostoevskii, my college English advisor and Paul Johnson is the reason I’m a conservative today – as long as this blog has been in existence. …
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The Golden Age Begins Now
I’ve never made bones about the fact I’ve been a Trump skeptic. Eight years ago I voted for Scott Walker, and thought that Trump’s term would be a disaster, hopefully mitigated by a good SCOTUS pick. I was wrong – mostlly, anyway. His behavior in 2020 cost the GOP the Senate, and he had an…
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Day 1, Part 2
The last time I watched a Presidential inauguration live on TV was when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated. I was in junior high, and they wheeled a TV into our history classroom. I missed Reagan’s (twice), Bush I, Clinton (twice), Dubya (twice), Trump’s first, and Obama (all three times). I may break my streak today. Partly…
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I Was Reliably Informed…
…that Donald Trump was literally Adolf Hitler. Why is Barack “The Lightworker” Obama have a seemingly civil, even amiable, discussion with Adolf Hitler’s reincarnation… …rather than trying to eliminate, literally, Adolf Hitler? (To be fair, it looks like Giggles and Mr. Nannynoodler would like to…)
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Jimmy Carter
Remember the movie “Miracle”? One of the last great Disney movies? For a lot of us, the opening credits were intensely evocative: These credits were as concisely effective a history of the 1970s, especially the Carter Administration, as I’ve seen. I was 13 when Jimmy Carter took office, and 17 when he left. I’m not…
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It’s A Family Thing
Progressives – in this case, a guy who was telling us Joe Biden was stronger and more with it than Chuck Norris in his prime until two hours before Giggle defenestrated him – are not cool with RFK Junior running the DHHS: So – RFK Jr. is driving his uncle’s car off the bridge and…
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Again.
It’s been a year since the Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 Israelis – the worst pogrom since World War 2. It’s a year that’s made me even more ashamed of America’s foreign policy than the previous 2.5 years of POTATUS and Harris had managed to do. But it tracks with the same I feel when I…
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A Time For Choosing A Movie
I saw the Reagan biopic last week. The movie was…good. Not the great movie the subject or the time of history deserves; Philip Klein points out some of the problems I couldn’t quite articulate, while Jim Geraghty echoed the reasons I left the show so excited anyway: Reagan is ultimately deeply satisfying for those of…
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Self-Evident
Using a ghost-writer today: The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the…
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Why Can’t Johnny Do History?
POTATUS – or “Doctor” Jill, or the social media intern – spoke last week: Question: do any of them know how this nation started? Or why?
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This Great And Noble Undertaking
I first wrote this piece in 2009. I’ve updated it, bit by bit, on successive D-Day anniversaries. I’m reprising it today: It was sixty-seven years ago today that the Allies started taking Western Europe back from the Nazis. The first, inevitable step was to get past the Westwall – perhaps the most immense set of fortifications…
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Evidence
Normally I’d call this evidence that Joe Biden is the worst president of my life time, Foreign Policy division: Of course, that’s not quite true; Obama is still the president, in every way that matters. So Obama remains comfortably ahead of Jimmy Carter.
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We Don’t Expect Much…
…from our younger generation. Almost 80 years ago, this was what a group of 18-22 year olds did: Today? Well, this may be the modern generation’s analog: A bunch of guys (lefties call them “frat boys” which I suspect means “any college student that doesn’t have blue hair or non-intuitive pronouns). We don’t expect much…
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Real American Heroes
Today is the 32nd anniversary of the mostly peaceful LA Riots. And of perhaps the greatest testimony for the 2nd Amendment in modern times – the impromptu armed resistance of the merchants of Koreatown: Here’s one take on the story (some language NSFW). We are in a state where the current political majority believes that…
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The Case For Letting Academia Burn To The Ground
The “American Political Science Association” has released the quadrennial cesspool that is their rankings of American presidents. You may have already figured out it’d be a leftist screed. You’d have figured largely right. From top to bottom, with my comments interspersed: 1 Lincoln – Couldln’t see that one coming…2 FD Roosevelt – Are you kidding?…
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Kind Of A Good News/Bad News Situation
“Things that can’t be sustained, won’t be”. China is headed for some serious problems – as we’ve discussed not so long ago. Russia is having its own problems – not the same, but similar. Russia in its current form is not sustainable . And that may well be the bad news: Very much worth a…
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Bob Beckwith
Bob Beckwith was the FDNY firefighter who stood with then-President Bush during one of the moments in my life when I was proudest to be an American. It occurs to me there’s a generation for whom “FDNY” isn’t instantly mentally associated with tragedy, heroism, and that particular moment 22 years ago.
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Happy Reagan’s Birthday
This is a piece from 2020. It’s been slightly updated. Today would be Ronald Reagan’s 114th birthday I’ve been writing about Reagan – who, along with PJ O’Rourke, Solzhenitzyn, Dostoevskii and Paul Johnson is the reason I’m a conservative today – as long as this blog has been in existence. His eight years were not…
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Haleyed
I don’t get the National Review hate – that might be worth a letter from Joe in and of itself. Anywayt, Joe Doakes emails: I know better than to read National Review Online but sometimes I can’t help myself. The recent article about Nikki Haley reminds me why that’s such a dumb thing to do. I hate…
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Never Again –> Probably Soon
20% of young people believe, to one extent or another, that the Holocaust was a “myth”. That sounds bad – and it is, but probably not for the reasons that jump out at you. As Ilya Somin at Volokh points out, part of it is an artifact of the survey question: While 8% of Americans…
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Anniversary
Today is the 82nd anniversary of Pearl Harbor. For those who observe. As I often have over this past few decades, I call out the fact that the first shots at Pearl Harbor were fired by a crew of Navy Reservists from Saint Paul, who’d been mobilized earlier in the year as part of Roosevelt’s…