April 8, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Declaration of Independence, Updated

Featured image The ideologically indescribable historian John Patrick Diggins once offered this version of the Declaration of Independence if it had been written by contemporary intellectuals: We hold these truths to be historically conditioned: that all men are created equal and mutually dependent; that from that equal creation they derive rights that are alienable and transferable depending on the larger question of needs, among which are the preservation of life, liberty, and »
April 8, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Thought for the Day: Bill Clinton on Hamas

Featured imageYou know things are bad when Bill Clinton is the voice of moral clarity in the Democratic Party. Here’s what he said in 2016: “I killed myself to give the Palestinians a state. I had a deal they turned down that would have given them all of Gaza… between 96%-97% of the West Bank, compensating land in Israel, you name it.” “Hamas is really smart. When they decide to rocket »
April 8, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Olbermann Stalks Sage Steele

Featured imageOf COURSE it was scripted. If it hadn’t have been @sagesteele – the dumbest person I’ve ever worked with in sports or news – couldn’t have gotten through it. I mean Jesus, if this happened to you, you’d just assume it WASN’T being done to protect the network from you humiliating it – and yourself? That was Keith Olbermann, after Sage Steele revealed that her 2021 interview with Joe Biden »
April 8, 2024 — Scott Johnson

To the Supreme Court

Featured imageI found the oral argument of the case now styled Murthy v. Missouri last month to be utterly demoralizing. As soon as the oral argument concluded I rashly hazarded my assessment that it portends a victory for the massive censorship-industrial complex represented by the Biden administration, probably on procedural grounds (i.e., standing). My assessment was a hot take based on the tenor of the argument. The argument seemed to me »
April 7, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Truth and Consequences

Featured imageThis is from Britain’s Telegraph, but I think we would see similar numbers in other countries, and worse in some: Only one in four British Muslims believe that Hamas committed murder and rape in Israel on Oct 7, a major report has found. The numbers are even worse for “educated” Muslims: Younger and well-educated Muslims were the most likely to think Hamas did not commit atrocities on Oct 7, with »
April 7, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Thought for the Day, From Richard Weaver

Featured imageRichard Weaver (author of the canonical 1949 text, Ideas Have Consequences) writing about social science in 1956: Those Congressmen who are reported to have confused social science with socialism may not have been so dumb after all. They had the right intuitive perception, even if they got the academic distinctions a little confused. A thing is defined partly by its tendency, and the tendency of scientistic social science, from Comte »
April 7, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Has Hamas (and Biden) Checkmated Israel?

Featured imageVery discouraging news out of Israel today that the IDF is pulling its forces out of southern Gaza, supposedly to “rest, regroup, and re-supply” after four months of hard fighting. Let us hope this is true, but one can’t help but suspect that this move may be in response to demands from the Biden Administration that will inevitably lead to a permanent cease-fire which will amount to a Hamas victory, »
April 7, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Sunday morning coming down

Featured imageMerle Haggard died eight years ago yesterday at the age of 79 — to be exact, on his seventy-ninth birthday. Haggard is finally the subject of a full-scale biography — The Hag: The Life, Times, and Music of Merle Haggard (2022), by Marc Eliot. Mark Pulliam reviewed it at Law and Liberty in the excellent column “Our redneck poet.” He “expand[s] upon Eliot’s respectful (but not hagiographic) treatment of the »
April 6, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

It Wasn’t Just Birx

Featured imageIt Wasn’t Fauci: How the Deep State Really Played Trump, the documentary Scott recently posted, outs Deborah Birx as the villain in the Covid drama. The case is strong, but there’s a back story people should know. In 1985, Birx began her career with the Department of Defense as a “military trained clinician in immunology, focusing on HIV/AIDS vaccine research.” That was the project of Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose bio »
April 6, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Rampant Anti-Semitism, and the Democrats

Featured imageOn Thursday evening, a malevolent crowd at a public forum at Rutgers threatened Jewish students and drove the university’s president from the room. The Free Beacon reports: A Rutgers University town hall descended into anarchy Thursday evening as anti-Israel students chanted demands to “globalize the intifada”… “Globalize the intifada” means that no Jew should ever be able to live in safety, anywhere in the world. …hurled anti-Semitic insults at Jewish »
April 6, 2024 — Steven Hayward

No Labels, No Ideas, No Candidates, No Clue

Featured imageIn the most unsurprising announcement of the week, No Labels has given up its plan for a third-party “unity” ticket, proving that generic brand politics has about as much appeal as generic brand consumer products. But at least the generic store brands, with their bland labels, save you money. Just what was the No Labels ticket going to stand for? Was there ever a single idea that No Labels stood »
April 7, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Why Biden Is Losing Young Voters, in One Chart

Featured imageAs I have written several times, with low unemployment, a (somehow) still-growing economy, and an unpopular rival candidate, Joe Biden ought to be breezing to a relatively easy re-election. But he continues to trail Trump. (Leave aside for separate treatment why the top line economic numbers are misleading. . .) Check out this chart from Bloomberg: Bloomberg translates what this means in terms of votes as follows: Trump is currently »
April 7, 2024 — John Hinderaker

The Coming Disinformation War

Featured imageIn the Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins reviews the dishonorable role that the intelligence community played in the 2016 and 2020 elections, and predicts more of the same. In 2016: A Democratic presidential campaign, representing the incumbent party, fabricated evidence that its Republican opponent and the eventual president-elect was a Russian agent, and the in-power party’s FBI legitimated the evidence in the eyes of the media so it would be »
April 7, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Their story

Featured imagePresident Biden used the IDF’s accidental killing of the seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza to demand that Israel capitulate to Hamas. That’s my translation of the White House readout of Biden’s April 4 phone call with Prime Minister Netanyahu. I posted the crucial excerpt here last week. I also noted that Secretary of State Blinken added a twist in his April 4 press conference. He declared that »
April 6, 2024 — John Hinderaker

The Peril of Being In a War Zone

Featured imageEarlier this week, an Israeli air strike inadvertently killed seven aid workers in Gaza. The strike was a mistake for which at least two Israeli army officers have been cashiered. It was the occasion for world-wide calumny, including a demand by Joe Biden that the Israelis go along with Hamas’s demand for a cease-fie, i.e., a Hamas victory. But tragedies happen in a war zone–even this one, where Israel has »
April 6, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Guest Column by Daniel B. Klein: Libertarians and Civic Virtue

Featured imageI sometimes say that I am a libertarian only on Tuesdays and Thursdays (and April 15) because libertarian purism can be politically frivolous. I was delighted that Daniel B. Klein, professor of economics and JIN Chair at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and editor of the invaluable Econ Journal Watch, sent the following article for our consideration, and I fully agree with it: An interview between two libertarians »
April 6, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Podcast: The 3WHH on Earthquakes, Physical and Political

Featured imageJohn Yoo takes command of host duties this week, as I was on the road at an academic conference at City University of New York, where a knowledgeable faculty member remarked that he was surprised I didn’t need an armed guard. The conference was largely devoted to the intellectual history of the liberal tradition, and was designed perfectly to induce a scornful snort from Lucretia who disdains all such flim-flummery. »