One of the great legacies of Union victory in the Civil War was the preservation of “these United States.” Historian Shelby Foote noted in the Ken Burns PBS documentary The Civil War, “Before the war, it was said, ‘the United States are…’. Grammatically, it was spoken that way and thought of as a collection of … Read more
Of all the misconceived nonsense in the recent Windsor v. United States ruling, perhaps the most egregious was Justice Anthony Kennedy’s insinuation that “the children made me do it.” Windsor declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional because it defined marriage as being between one man and one woman. Why was DOMA a problem for … Read more
“The laws of our land are catching up to the fundamental truth that millions of Americans hold in our hearts: when all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free.” —President Barack Obama, June 26, 2013 “I will tell you that I don’t believe … Read more
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee; And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils … Read more
The student congress at Harvard, America’s most prestigious “institution of higher learning,” as the euphemism goes, has voted to provide funds to a campus group promoting sadomasochistic sex. Members of the Love and Fidelity Network, a group promoting chastity before marriage and faithfulness within, voice their opposition, and are widely denounced and ridiculed. A female … Read more
Complaints that Washington-is-broken, which seem to have new intensity in recent years, often go hand-in-hand with laments about “partisanship” in politics. And, to be sure, there are reasons to be concerned about the functionality of our political system and its ability to address and solve some very serious problems. The present, sad condition of much … Read more
The American working class isn’t clinging bitterly to guns and religion; it is letting go of everything that once distinguished it. That’s what American sociologist and recent wave-maker Charles Murray says in Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, along with his essay “The New American Divide.” Despite the considerable evidence Murray offers to … Read more
The Attorney General of the United States has again abdicated his duties; he has notified Congress that he will not defend a duly enacted law in the courts. He did this in February of last year, too, when he stepped back from upholding the federal Defense of Marriage Act. This time, he refuses to defend … Read more
Obama’s health care act shows that decrees issued by government bureaucrats have displaced the rule of law.
The eclectic national Presidents Day, homogenizes our veneration of the man General “Lighthorse Harry” Lee eulogized as “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” It also neglects Abraham Lincoln, who with the Father of Our Country made a pair unmatched for virtue and genius appropriate to their tasks … Read more
Governor Mitt Romney’s statement about not worrying about the poor has been treated as a gaffe in much of the media, and those in the Republican establishment who have been rushing toward endorsing his coronation as the GOP’s nominee for president — with 90 percent of the delegates still not yet chosen — have been … Read more
Appearing alongside CIA Director David Petraeus before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said of Iran: “We don’t believe they’ve actually made the decision to go ahead with a nuclear weapon.” Before the hearing, as James Fallows of The Atlantic reports, Clapper released his “Worldwide Threat … Read more
The following review originally appeared in the Summer 2005 edition of The Intercollegiate Review, and appears with the permission of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity, by Samuel P. Huntington, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004, $16. This is a rare book—erudite and readable, analytical but … Read more
Is it possible that secular liberals, some of them anyway, are starting to realize that knocking the supports out from under traditional marriage may not be such a great idea? If so, and if their next step is to think seriously about how to halt this destructive process, it will be the dawning of a … Read more
With all the talk about “disparities” in innumerable contexts, there is one very important disparity that gets remarkably little attention — disparities in the ability to create wealth. People who are preoccupied, or even obsessed, with disparities in income are seldom interested much, or at all, in the disparities in the ability to create wealth, … Read more
Lee Wishing of the Center for Vision and Values interviewed Helen Krieble, author of the plan proposed by Rep. Newt Gingrich for resolving the status of millions of illegal aliens in the U.S. Krieble was responding to a recent column by Ann Coulter which criticized the plan. Ms. Krieble will be a speaker at the … Read more
Friday’s lead stories in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal dealt with what both viewed as a national affront and outrage. Egyptian soldiers, said the Post, “stormed the offices” of three U.S. “democracy-building organizations … in a dramatic escalation of a crackdown by the military-led government that could imperil its relations with … Read more
The first round of Egyptian parliamentary elections has taken place, and the winners were two Islamist parties. The Islamists themselves are split between more extreme and more moderate factions, but it is clear that the secularists who dominated the demonstrations and who were the focus of the Arab Spring narrative made a poor showing. Of the three … Read more
Have you heard any good news lately? Bad news abounds. It’s been another tough year. Economic woes continue. Greece and Italy are on the verge of bankruptcy. Unemployment is still high in the United States (around 8.6 percent), and the stock market has taken a beating. With approximately $108 billion in insured catastrophic losses, 2011 … Read more
Republicans and Democrats, liberals as well as conservatives, have bought into anti-Chinese trade demagoguery. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that tariffs against China are a “key part of our ‘Make It in America’ agenda.” During his 2010 campaign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called his tea party-backed Republican challenger, Sharron Angle, “a … Read more