Freedom
September 23, 2023 — Scott Johnson
In John Updike’s short story “Bech in Czech” (collected in Bech at Bay), Updike’s fictional alter ego is sent to Czechoslovakia on a cultural exchange program through the United States government in 1986, while the country is still Communist. Bech attends a party of dissident writers, one of whom had been imprisoned. Bech reflects: Jail! One of the guests at the party had spent nearly ten years in prison. He
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September 22, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s most recent column is “Martyrs — and newsmen — for freedom” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column
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November 28, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The big stories of the past few days share a theme in common: • Protests of China’s insane Covid regime have broken out around China. I followed them on Twitter over the weekend (as in the tweet below, for example). People of Beijing are protesting near Sitong Bridge, shouting: “We want freedom, we want freedom!” pic.twitter.com/O12i58jVjr — Xiyue Wang (@XiyueWang9) November 28, 2022 • However, traditional news outlets with reporters
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March 3, 2022 — Scott Johnson
In his review of Stalin’s Library: A Dictator and His Books, by Geoffrey Roberts, Nigel Jones writes in the Spectator: Roberts takes us through Stalin’s life and shows how his reading molded his actions. Books transformed the bright seminary student into a ferocious revolutionary, prepared to sacrifice family, friends and a vast array of enemies — capitalists, kulaks, fellow Bolsheviks, imperialists, Trotskyist deviationists and millions of ordinary Soviet citizens —
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February 6, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The Canadian truckers’ revolt is a classic 21st century conflict. On one side, working people of all sorts (it’s gone way beyond truckers) standing up for freedom. On the other side, vicious plutocrats trying to hang on to their corrupt powers by smearing those who dare to stand up for their rights. Via InstaPundit, check out this wonderful video that contrasts Justin Trudeau’s farcical condemnation of the Ottawa protest with
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February 3, 2022 — John Hinderaker
In recent years, we have seen a fundamental realignment in American, and Western, politics. After something like 200 years of purporting to represent the laboring classes, liberalism has been exposed. Most voters now understand that it is Republicans, and by inference conservatives, who speak for the working class. Democrats (liberals) are seen as the party of the would-be elites, who unfortunately aren’t elite at anything useful. This is the context
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December 22, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Abigail Shrier is the author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. Standing athwart the trans craze shouting stop, she and the book have achieved a certain notoriety. Having been invited to give a speech at Princeton, she was of course canceled, only to emerge off campus before a limited audience of 35. She gave a wonderful speech addressed to young people. The theme, as Bari Weiss aptly
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December 9, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Julie Fancelli, the subject of a Washington Post drive-by attack, has contributed millions of dollars to charity through a family foundation. She also contributes generously to conservative political candidates. In late December of last year, she made substantial contributions to groups sponsoring and promoting the January 6 protest rally in Washington, D.C. The money apparently was used to pay travel and hotel expenses for some of the pro-Trump protesters. Fancelli
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August 9, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Headline of the week: Census Bureau statisticians and outside experts are trying to unravel a mystery: Why were so many questions about households in the 2020 census left unanswered? Residents did not respond to a multitude of questions about sex, race, Hispanic background, family relationships and age, even when providing a count of the number of people living in the home, according to documents released by the agency. Statisticians had
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August 8, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
The Justice Department has dropped a case it had filed on behalf of a Vermont nurse who was forced to participate in an abortion that violates her religious beliefs. Fox News reports on this case here. Roger Severino provides important context here. When a Republican administration abandons a lawsuit brought by its Democratic predecessor, the mainstream media invariably cries foul. Perhaps for this reason, Republican cabinet members often persevere with
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March 22, 2021 — Scott Johnson
I hesitated to post this video of Jewish Review of Books editor Abe Socher interviewing former Gulag prisoner Natan Sharansky and historian Gil Troy about their new book, Never Alone. The book is the subject of “Sharanksy’s Exodus,” the excellent review by Daniel Gordis in the Spring issue of the JRB. Gordis’s review highlights the phenomenon of Orwellian doublethink — “the round-the-clock public charade” of knowing one thing but saying
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July 10, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Do you recall the anti-George W. Bush petition that generated scads of mock signatories such as Hugh G. Reckshun? James Taranto delighted in chronicling the signatures daily in his online Best of the Web column for the Wall Street Journal. More recently, The Open Letter from Yale Law Students, Alumni, and Educators Regarding Brett Kavanaugh attracted one such signatory: “Charles U Farley, YLS ‘04.” Now, Charles Glasser observed, that’s a
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July 8, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
On July 4, a group of more than 400 Princeton faculty members and (from the look of it) hangers-on sent a letter to the university’s president and other leaders on the subject of “anti-black racism.” After a few perfunctory and unsupported allegations about this phenomenon, the authors proceed to the business at hand. They present several dozen “demands.” Each demand seems more outlandish than the last until, finally, we get
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May 24, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Here is how David Brooks begins his May 21 column for the New York Times: I was an American history major in college, back in the 1980s. I’ll be honest with you. I thrilled to the way the American story was told back then. To immigrate to America was to join the luckiest and greatest nation in history. . . . To be born American was to be born to
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February 28, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Dan Proft is an excellent radio host in Chicago who now also has a syndicated radio show and podcast. I have been on the Chicago show a number of times, and joined Dan’s syndicated show yesterday afternoon for what I thought was an interesting discussion of socialism, capitalism and the Nordic model in the context of the 2020 election. Here is the conversation, which is around 14 minutes long. I
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February 27, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Walter Russell Mead is a leading foreign policy expert. He writes a regular column for the Wall Street Journal. Recently, Mead published a WSJ column called “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia.” Much of the article pertained to the coronavirus and its economic impact. But Mead also argued that “China’s financial markets are probably more dangerous in the long run than China’s wildlife markets,” which are thought to
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February 8, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today and the Freedom Forum, paid for a sign in Red Square that said, “Freedom Works.” Actually, freedom doesn’t always work. However, it works far more often than the denial of freedom. Indeed, it seems to me that the denial of freedom never really works for a society in any strong sense. China is the latest test
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