History
June 23, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Victor Davis Hanson has criticized conservatives for agreeing that Confederate statutes should be taken down if local city councils authorize doing so. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, he explained: The mob says back to them [some conservatives] “you want it gone, why waste the city council vote?” It’s sort of like the Soviet Duma has to ratify a prejudged conclusion and it’s not “let the city council come to
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June 21, 2020 — Scott Johnson
United States Ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau wrote last night to add to our chronicle of the tear down all the things phase of the leftist mob violence: I’m a loyal reader of your site and, needless to say, have been following you with even greater intensity lately given the recent rash of insanity in our beloved country. In reference to John Hinderaker’s post “Grant, Too” I just wanted to
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June 21, 2020 — Scott Johnson
I wrote this on Father’s Day several years ago. It is a post that struck a chord with at least a few readers. I have amplified it this year and am taking the liberty of reposting these reflections in honor of the day. My father was a thoughtful man in his own way. In the last years of his life he recited for me the things for which he was
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June 20, 2020 — John Hinderaker
So much for the idea that “Confederate monuments” are under attack. Last night in San Francisco, left-wingers pulled down a statue of Ulysses Grant, the man who did more than anyone except Lincoln to preserve the Union and abolish slavery. Grant also, as President, did all he could to enforce Reconstruction and protect blacks in the South. He sent the military after the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina, worked
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June 19, 2020 — John Hinderaker
This was entirely predictable, and now it’s happened. Anyone who thought liberals would be satisfied with demolishing the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson doesn’t know liberals. Last night in Portland, leftists destroyed a statue of George Washington: Portland wakes up to see what antifa did overnight. A century old statue of George Washington was toppled & set on fire with an American flag. “White fragility,” “Damn white
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June 16, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Lost amidst all of the other good news from the 2016 elections was the fact that Tim Kaine didn’t get to be vice president. Unfortunately, he’s still a U.S. Senator. Today, Kaine took to the Senate floor to declare that “the United States didn’t inherit slavery from anybody, we created it.” This statement brought down a torrent of ridicule. Perhaps the funniest response is this piece by Megan Fox at
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June 15, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Life in lockdown requires something better than the news of the day. Avoiding the news to the extent that I can consistent with my responsibilities here, I have looked for historical and literary diversions as an escape. Who better to escape with than Harry Houdini? I knew next to nothing about Houdini before I read Kenneth Silverman’s biography Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss, American Self-Liberator, Europe’s Eclipsing Sensation, World’s
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June 14, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) is a six-block residential area in Seattle taken over by radical protesters and anarchists. It’s being referred to as “a kind of commune.” CHAZ isn’t a traditional American commune. Traditionally, our communes consist of small groups of people with an affinity for one another (at first, anyway) who establish a sustainable community (in theory, anyway), typically in a rural area. CHAZ consists of whomever,
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June 11, 2020 — Scott Johnson
A statue of Columbus was pulled down on our state capitol grounds in St. Paul yesterday afternoon. This vandalism seems to have taken place with the blessing of Governor Walz and his crew of idiots. Tom Hauser of KSTP News has posted the timeline of events yesterday as follows along with three videos including Hauser’s incredulous live commentary on the statue coming down that I have posted at the bottom.
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June 11, 2020 — Scott Johnson
We drew attention to Professor Gary Saul Morson’s essay “How the great truth dawned.” It led off the September 2019 issue of The New Criterion. Beginning and ending with Solzhenitsyn, Professor Morson’s essay takes up the Gulag, Communism, mass murder, Russian literature, the turn to God and much more. It is a great essay. The New Criterion invited Professor Morson back to deliver its inaugural Circle Lecture. It posted an
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June 10, 2020 — John Hinderaker
The mania currently sweeping much of the Western world apparently knows no limits. In the U.K., Black Lives Matter activists are trying to tear down statues of famous Britons, including Robert Peel. Why Robert Peel? Because he is “seen as the father of modern policing,” having founded London’s metropolitan police department. Which, of course, was famously unarmed. But that isn’t the worst of it: Nelson’s Column is the latest target
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June 10, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party merged with the state Democratic Party in April 1944. Thus was the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party born. Working from inside the Democratic Party, Hubert Humphrey helped engineer the merger. The Farmer-Labor Party was riddled with Communists. Humphrey knew it, but he had no trouble working with them. At the time he was a Popular Front kind of guy with no enemies to the left. Packing the 1946 party caucuses,
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June 4, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
In reading tributes to the late Wes Unseld, I learned that Adolph Rupp, the racist coach at the University of Kentucky, wanted to make Unseld the first black member of his team. Indeed, Rupp tried very hard to recruit Big Wes. Unseld, an outstanding student on top of everything else, was recruited by top programs throughout the country. But he was a Kentucky native and quite interested in playing at
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May 25, 2020 — Scott Johnson
In observance of Memorial Day 2007 the Wall Street Journal published a brilliant column by the late Peter Collier to mark the occasion. The column remains timely and is accessible online here. I don’t think we’ll read or hear anything more thoughtful or appropriate to the occasion today. With the kind permission of Peter himself, here it is: Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: those
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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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May 12, 2020 — Scott Johnson
The American Story podcast has been coming out once a week, every Tuesday, since Constitution Day last year. Each episode is a 6-8 minute story about what it is that makes America beautiful, heartbreaking, funny, inspiring, and endlessly interesting. They are written and recorded by Power Line friend Chris Flannery, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and contributing editor of The Claremont Review of Books. They are well-conceived, well-written, and
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May 7, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The New York Times’ 1619 Project has been hammered so effectively by scholars that to keep attacking it may seem like piling on. However, the Times has just been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for its drive-by attack on America. Thus, I think another wave of criticism is justified. In this post, I took on the Project’s ludicrous claim, ultimately abandoned, that the American Revolution was, in significant part, the result
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