I read a lot of columns and columnists to populate the Picks that rotate through the top of our home page. I thought I might take a look back over some of my favorites of the past year. Having thought about it over the past few days, I am afraid the list necessarily reflects a recency bias. Please take these Picks as representative of the columnists’ work and conservative publications that are worth seeking out. Omissions and oversights are many and unintentional.
• David Samuels and David Garrow, “The Obama factor” (Tablet, August 2, 2023). This must be one of the most widely read columns of the year. It is in any event my pick for column of the year.
• Lee Smith, “The global empire of Palestine” (Tablet, December 19, 2023). Everything Lee writes is worth reading. This column is only his most recent at Tablet. See his Tablet archive here.
• Richard Goldberg, “Biden has a secret, illegal deal with Iran that gives mullahs everything they want” (New York Post, September 12, 2023). As they say, this explains a lot. This is a reported column that delivered the goods. See also Tony Badran below.
• Tony Badran, “Iran sponsored the October 7 massacre. America paid for it” (Tablet, December 13, 2023). Sad but true.
• Matti Friedman, “An insider’s guide to the most important story on earth” (Tablet, August 25, 2014). I include Friedman’s column on this list to adjust for my recency bias, but this one could have been written yesterday.
• Victor Davis Hanson, “Civilization versus the new nihilists” (Blade of Perseus, December 14, 2023). I asked Victor’s colleague Jack Fowler for help in picking a favorite column by the indispensable VDH this year. Jack suggested this one. Follow Victor’s work at Blade of Perseus.
• Daniel Mahoney, “The Crisis of the West Revisited: Self-Flagellation and the Great Liberal Death Wish” (The American Mind, October 30, 2023). Helping Professor Mahoney bring his work to our attention, Jack Fowler emails me to announce “It’s Mahoney time!” whenever Dan publishes a new column at Law & Liberty or The American Mind. I turned to Jack again for help in picking this one. We hope to have Professor Mahoney join us as an occasional contributor in the new year for short-form commentary geared to the news of the day.
• Nathan Pinkoski, “Spiritual death of the West” (First Things, May 2023). Jean Raspail’s prescient Camp of the Saints revisited.
• Helen Dale and Lorenzo Warby, “Our postcolonial trash needs taking out” (Not On Your Team, But Always Fair, November 14, 2023). Courtesy of my friend Bruce Sanborn.
• Michael Barone, “Give thanks to the Founders” (Jewish World Review, November 22, 2023). Barone is a walking encyclopedia of American political history, the senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, and a resident fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute. See his Examiner archive here and his AEI profile here. He is the author, most recently, of Mental Maps of the Founders, published last month by Encounter Books.
• John Tierney, “Approximately zero” (City Journal, February 17, 2023). The Manhattan Institute’s City Journal is one of my favorite magazines and one of my favorite sites. Former New York Times writer and columnist John Tierney is a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute and a regular contributor. See his impressive MI profile here.
• Brendan O’Neill, “Everyone’s as bonkers as the Unabomber now” (Spiked, June 12, 2023). O’Neill is Spiked’s chief political writer. He contributes two or three columns a week. See his Spiked archive here.
• Richard Kemp, “Jew-hate at American universities” (Gatestone, January 11, 2023). The invaluable Colonel Kemp saw it coming down the pike at the beginning of this particular annus horribilis. See also “Shijaiyah: In one of history’s most treacherous battlefields, friendly fire is almost a given” (Ynet News, December 18, 2023).
• Miranda Devine, “The real scoop on Bidenomics: Corruption, tax evasion and Hunter” (New York Post, July 26, 2023). If merit had anything to do with it, Devine would be a repeat winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. This is representative of her work this year.
• Eli Lake, “The scandal of Robert Malley” (Commentary, December 2023). Reading Commentary regularly since 1973 helped educate me and change my mind about things. I am grateful to Norman Podhoretz. Son John Podhoretz carries it on.
• Roger Kimball, “Henry Kissinger, 1923-2023” (The New Criterion, January 2024). So I’m cheating a little with this one dated next month, but it’s posted and accessible now. I am a charter subscriber to The New Criterion. This is a stand-in for all the outstanding editorials, articles, and reviews it published in 2023.
• Andrew Ferguson, “Memoirs of a closet conservative” (Washington Free Beacon, September 3, 2023). The Free Beacon publishes book reviews on Sundays. This was one of the best. See also all of Joseph Epstein’s Free Beacon reviews compiled here.
On a personal note, I am grateful to City Journal for publishing “The anti-cop attorney general” (June 8, 2023), my review/essay on Keith Ellison’s Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence. My review was far from a best of the year, but I have been covering Ellison’s career for Power Line since June 2006. I crammed a lot of what I have learned into the review. Although you’d never know it from reading the local or national press, Ellison’s book should vie for recognition as the worst of the year. If R. Emmett Tyrell is still handing out J. Gordon Coogler Awards, Ellison’s book is my 2023 nominee.
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