The Left

Shady Grove, Act II

Featured image The Star Tribune represents the mainstream media at work in Minnesota. It relentlessly peddles the left-wing line on its news pages and its editorial positions. It is, moreover, a profitable business owned by a billionaire. Glen Taylor bought it in 2014 for $100 million. He may have assumed some of the paper’s debt in the process. It reportedly makes a substantial amount of money churning out its product. According to »

Random thoughts on the passing seen

Featured image I have adapted the heading of this post from the great Thomas Sowell’s occasional columns expressing “random thoughts on the passing scene.” It is unbelievable how many apothegms he formulated and shibboleths he pierced in those occasional columns. In no way can I rise to Sowell’s standards. I only claim to have a few random thoughts. Random I can do. Sowell compiled numerous random thoughts from his columns in Part »

They Don’t Embarrass Easy

Featured image You probably remember Katie Hill, the Democratic Congresswoman from California. Hill and her husband were swingers. Among other things, they went on a swingers’ cruise. In connection with that venture, Katie placed an ad in a swingers’ magazine in which she used the name “Angelbutt 123.” She and her husband then became entangled in a “throuple” with a young woman on Katie’s staff. That implicated workplace concerns, and was too »

The Sotomayor exception

Featured image Paul Gigot writes in the Wall Street Journal’s morning editorial report email today: Democrats and progressives now dominate nearly every leading political and cultural institution in America. The most important exception is the U.S. Supreme Court, which after many decades finally has a majority of originalist Justices. This is proving to be intolerable to Democrats and the press corps, which are unleashing a furious political attack on the current Court, »

In Re: The Pelosi Story

Featured image Decent people will want to avoid politicizing the story of Paul Pelosi’s assault by a clearly deranged person who likely should have been institutionalized or in jail, although it is worth pointing out that Nancy Pelosi’s daughter Tweeted out after Rand Paul was assaulted that “Rand Paul’s neighbor was right.” But a Canadian newspaper story (Pelosi’s assailant is an immigrant from Canada) just had to include this: The intruder’s shouts »

Peak Trump Derangement Syndrome

Featured image Of course, that is a risky prediction, given that the Democrats’ Trump Derangement Syndrome seems to become more acute on a daily basis. But for now, this may represent a peak (or nadir). Former CIA Director Michael Hayden suggests–I don’t think there is any other plausible interpretation–that Donald Trump should be executed for giving nuclear secrets to the Russians, a claim for which there is, to say the least, zero »

Kill for abortion

Featured image To adapt an old thought, hysteria has consequences. The Federalist’s Christopher Bedford documents the depths of the descent in “Never Forget How Vicious And Violent Was The Left’s Top-To-Bottom Anti-Court Campaign.” The editors of Issues & Insights line up the “consequences” in a set of bullet points with links. Their editorial is “The left aborts its right to be called tolerant…or intelligent.” The past few days have put me in »

The Unhinged Left in Action

Featured image When I stumbled across this item on Twitter, I first assumed it had to be satire—specifically of “Beto” O’Rourke. But it appears to be real. I think it works better as satire, but your mileage may vary. Too bad we don’t have a category for “Unhinged Left” on our site, so I guess “Sick Left” will have to do. (At least it’s nice to find a leftist who apparently can »

CRB: Present at the creation

Featured image The new (Spring) issue of the Claremont Review of Books has just been posted online this morning. I asked the editors if they would make their interview with the great Norman Podhoretz accessible for our readers. Here it is: “Present at the creation.” Subhead: “Norman Podhoretz on the rise of the anti-American left.” The interview opens with a reference to the 2019 CRB interview of Mr. Podhoretz by CRB editor »

Robert Wistrich revisited

Featured image Robert S. Wistrich was the Neuburger Professor of European and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the director of the university’s Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism. He may also have been the leading academic authority on anti-Semitism. Witness his histories A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism From Antiquity to the Global Jihad (2010) and From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, The Jews and Israel (2012). »

Why did baseball capitulate?

Featured image Jim Geraghty wonders why Major League Baseball pulled its all-star game from Georgia, but major sporting events are still scheduled to take place in that state. He cites the Masters Golf Tournament, as well as all home games for professional Atlanta teams and Georgia’s collegiate athletic programs. In addition, the following events are still a go, as of now: The 2021 Chick-fil-A Kickoff Games in Atlanta The 2021 SEC Championship »

Who tamed whom?

Featured image The headline of this Washington Post article is “How Joe Biden tamed the left — at least for now.” The authors show, in essence, that Biden tamed the left by giving leftists what they want. One might say the left tamed Biden. The authors claim to find it “surprising” that Biden and the left are getting on so well. If the authors are surprised, they’re awfully naive. The better view »

Descent of the adversary culture

Featured image Dartmouth Professor of English Jeffrey Hart opened my mind to the great tradition and more during the four years I was his student. A long-time senior editor at National Review, Professor Hart contributed “The secession of the intellectuals” to NR’s 15th anniversary issue in 1970. Thinking of Power Line’s own 15th anniversary a few years back, I returned to that essay. NR editor Rich Lowry kindly arranged for the publication »

Project Veritas Strikes Again, Gets a Scalp

Featured image The merry pranksters of Project Veritas captured a (no ex-) PBS attorney, Michael Beller, saying the following (video below): Michael Beller: “We go for all the Republican voters and Homeland Security will take their children away…we’ll put them into the re-education camps.” “Enlightenment camps. They’re nice, they have Sesame Street characters in the classrooms, and they watch PBS all day.” “Americans are so f*cking dumb. You know, most people are »

Georgia H walks away

Featured image Georgia H has contributed her story of walking away from the Democrats to the #walkaway series posted on YouTube. She says that Teach for America made her “abandon the racism of the left. AOC made me abandon the left altogether.” The video has registered more than 800,000 views, but it was brought to my attention by a reader. The reader comments: A lovely, young, very articulate and intelligent woman who »

Suicide of the liberals

Featured image We have previously drawn attention to Professor Gary Saul Morson’s New Criterion essay “How the great truth dawned,” Professor Morson’s New Criterion lecture “Leninthink,” Professor Morson’s New York Review of Books review “The horror, the horror,” and Professor Morson’s book Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time (Steve wrote about it here). To these I now want to add Professor Morson’s First Things essay “Suicide of the liberals.” Drawing on »

Learning from France ’68

Featured image Anticipating the 50th anniversary of what the French euphemistically call “the events” of ’68, Professor Daniel Mahoney provided a retrospective assessment based on the work of Raymond Aron, Roger Scruton, and Pierre Manent in the Law & Liberty essay “France’s psychodrama of 1968.” Steve revisited the subject with Professor Mahoney last week in the podcast posted here. Rereading Professor Mahoney’s 2018 essay, I was most struck by this paragraph toward »