paywall
The return of the Blob
For decades, Washington think tanks were vital to a virtuous revolving door. Young policy professionals, both Democrats and Republicans, would…
The future of populist conservatism
Laramie, Wyoming William Kristol, a Grand Poobah of neoconservatism, is leaving the Republican party to join the donkeys of the…
After Trump, the reckoning
As voters prepare to pass judgment on Donald Trump’s presidency in November, they might want to entertain a few counterfactuals.…
Why I won’t vote
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a piece titled ‘The battle cry of the politically homeless’ in which I…
Make America Normal Again
To win in November, Trump should seek inspiration from President Alexander Lukashenko, the 65-year-old autocrat who has ruled Belarus since…
The right stuff
No matter what the pundits say, no matter how the polls look, November’s presidential election is very much up for…
How to be right
Two broad camps divide American conservatism today: those who get it, and those who don’t — the woke and unwoke,…
Cuckoo Q: are the QAnon crowd as crazy as they seem?
‘Have you guys been following 4Chan?’ asks Marjorie Taylor Greene in a 2017 video. A mysterious ‘patriot’ named ‘Q’, Greene…
The war for your mind
The romantic plans of a Kazakh bodybuilder named Yuri Tolochko have become one more casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. He…
Donald Trump isn’t mad
It is alarming how psychiatric diagnoses have crept into the political commentary. Donald Trump, we’ve been told, has narcissistic personality…
Biden is not the president America needs
In a 2008 essay in the American Conservative, I encouraged my fellow conservatives to vote for Sen. Barack Obama in…
Same old same old
American politics is getting senile. Donald Trump and Barack Obama were both elected as agents of change, repudiations of an…
Obama’s disappearing legacy
This article is in The Spectator’s August 2020 US edition. Subscribe here to get yours. The presidency of Barack Obama was heralded…
How liberal globalism went bankrupt
When future historians chronicle the period after the Cold War, the rise of China will dominate their accounts. Beginning in…
What will Biden do?
The oddities of Joe Biden’s third presidential campaign are impossible to ignore. He is the oldest man ever nominated by…
Biden offers no change and no hope
For too long, Republicans and the media refused to take Joe Biden seriously as a presidential candidate. It’s hard to…
Prodigal son-in-law
A friend in Washington saw Jared and Ivanka at a couple of smart DC dinner parties in the first year…
The Kushner conundrum
After a string of broken promises, policy disappointments and sinking poll numbers, the populist wing of the Republican party knows…
End of empire
The end of World War Two inaugurated the era of American dominion, with the United States politically, economically and militarily…
Is this the end of history?
Midway through Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, there occurs this exchange between two characters: ‘“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill…
Bright lights, abandoned city
Joan Didion wrote that New York is a city only for the very rich, the very poor and the very…
The rioters and the rentiers
It was inevitable that the wave of destructive rioting and looting that has swept through cities that are almost all…
The new inequality
It is a strange habit, the American one of making talk-show hosts into preachers. There is no good reason, after…
Self-righteous vandals
Violent left-wing activists have taken to styling themselves as antifa, short for ‘anti-fascists’, though their street-fighting tactics resemble nothing so…
Marching against racism is too easy
When I first saw the footage of George Floyd being asphyxiated by a policeman’s knee on his throat, my reaction…
