David Gelernter is a computer scientist, artist, and writer who is a professor of computer science at Yale University. A prolific contributor to The Weekly Standard from its founding through 2016, he wrote extensively on American culture, religion, education, history, and the intersection of technology and society. He survived a mail bombing by the Unabomber in 1993 and is the author of numerous books on computing, aesthetics, and American identity.
Four themes flow together at one of the most remarkable points in American history—the evening when Abraham Lincoln for the last time proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving. It was April 11, 1865: two days after the Civil War ended with Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox; four days before…
Many intellectuals misunderstand Donald Trump. Intellectuals often forget that Americans vote for a man, not a white paper, and that Trump passed the very first test for Republican candidates in 2016 while the rest of the field flunked. He was angry and seemed capable of acting on his anger. Trump…
Donald Trump is succeeding, we're told, because he appeals to angry voters — but that's obvious; tell me more. Why are they angry, and how does he appeal to them? In 2016, Americans want to vote for a person and not a white paper. If you care about America's fate under Obama, naturally you are…
The asymmetry of modern politics is clear to every conservative; painfully clear to several Yale undergraduates who asked me about it recently. Leftists, they pointed out, are hostile, nasty, and seem to have no concept of a civil conversation. Why? Because they are winning? Losing? Are…
The difference between man and woman is the force that hauls life forward (as the Talmud remarks) and the origin of everything that is most beautiful in our world. I thought I understood that, but I didn’t until my father died. The whole can transcend the sum of parts, and that’s why Judaism deems…
President Obama has ignored the recent history of U.S. foreign policy, faithfully repeating failed strategies and turning his back on successes. The pattern is so strange and striking, we can almost hear it trying to tell us something. The something is this: You cannot be a nationalist and a…
News from academia! “President Salovey and I,” writes Yale’s provost, “have invited a distinguished group of academic leaders to a diversity summit at Yale on February 11-12, 2014. Their visit will include a series of discussions with faculty and administrators about the challenges of diversifying…
This school-reopening season ought to be a time of deep pondering and self-examination for conservatives and everyone else who cares about the future of this nation and the world. It’s time to notice how little we have done about the most powerful, dangerous, reactionary force in America today: the…
‘Matisse: In Search of True Painting” is a smallish but superb show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It focuses on pairs and series of related paintings, and the sheer loveliness of its best pieces resounds through the huge building and out onto Fifth Avenue. But it is sad that this small-scale,…
The Serpent and the Lamb is not easy to pin down. Officially, it tells the story of Martin Luther’s relations with the eminent painter Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553); Professor Ozment argues that the two men created the Protestant Reformation between them. Luther was the mastermind and…
The future of Iran’s nuclear weapons program depends on one of those strange alignments of justice and personal gain that create eclipses and flood tides when planetary bodies are the actors. It’s important that the world understand these strange circumstances.
I, and every conservative I know, have been eagerly polite, warmly encouraging to women who chose to work—from the very beginning, from the 1970s or ‘80s, when working women first changed the national landscape.
New York’s art museums are shirking two crucial civic duties. One is to show major artworks, not just buy them. The other is to serve the community in which they live. Museums in other American cities often do the same, but New York is different: It is still (for the time being) the center of the…
Since word came of the terrorist murder and mayhem in the Negev, I haven't been able to get out of my head an old Israeli dance song about setting out for the desert. There has been (Lord knows) plenty of blood shed in the Negev since this long-ago song was first sung, but the first generation LP…
Obamacrats think their man is in trouble because (as usual) he’s got “communication problems.” He seems to suffer from these all the time, which is odd given that he was elected mainly because of his flair for communicating; given that the queen of England is still, no doubt, enjoying the audio…
Although it’s gauche to ask, one can’t help wondering: Do the Obamacrats love America? If so, how come? Would they please be specific?
Ilana Lewitan is a painter of questions too wide or deep for words, whose originality, intelligence, and painterly virtuosity make her one of the most significant surrealists in decades. Her work is now on show at the prestigious Galerie Noah in Augsburg. Possibly you weren’t planning to stop by…
Makoto Fujimura is one of the best painters alive; there is no finer abstract painter at work today. He is a Christian who lives in New York and paints using the traditional Japanese Nihonga technique, and Crossway has just published an elegantly produced folio of the four gospels with Fujimura’s…
Yehuda Halevi
Martin Amis’s most recent novel told a story about the summer of 1970 from a modern standpoint. Strange fact: The Pregnant Widow revealed, without exactly meaning to, that cultural attitudes have gone virtually nowhere in the last 40 years.
The eminent abstract painter Robert Natkin died on April 20 in Danbury, Connecticut, aged 79. The Metropolitan, Guggenheim, Whitney, and Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Hirschhorn in Washington all own Natkin paintings. In one sense, he was a magnificent survival of the New York School of…
Daniel Pipes is one of several commentators to note that many reporters would love to dismiss each new terrorist incident as the work of lunatics, until the disappointing news arrives that the suspect is yet another Muslim Jihadist. Several observations leap to their feet immediately, and there is…
In a small but magisterial show that stopped in Paris and then (late last year) at the Dillon Gallery in Manhattan, Makoto Fujimura emerged as a major artist, one of the dozen-odd most compelling painters at work today. Fujimura is a Christian who paints within the Nihonga tradition of a limited…
Charles Darwin
We see better when we recognize and can name (at least for our own purposes) the things we see. If you can tell a delphinium from a daylily, or a Titian from a Rubens, or a Honda Civic from a Lotus Elise, you see the world in sharper focus than someone who can't.
Several smart observers have described the root cause of the ongoing battle between Israel and Hamas in the exact same phrase: "irreconcilable differences." America and Europe are warned not to press for pointless negotiations, because the parties are irreconcilable. Israel and the Palestinians…
Americans have traditionally rated their statesmen's moral stature above all other accomplishments. "The truth is," says a foreigner to a Frenchman in Stendhal's classic of 1830 Le Rouge et le Noir, "that your aged society values conventionality above everything; you will never rise higher than…
McCain might break through the media fortress that protects independents from the truth if he'd repeat a small packet of information word-for-word at the end of every single speech. Soon crowds would anticipate these words and reporters would know them by heart, and they'd start making an…
McCain might break through the media fortress that protects independents from the truth if he'd repeat a small packet of information word-for-word at the end of every single speech. Soon crowds would anticipate these words and reporters would know them by heart, and they'd start making an…
Barack Obama is America's first major party presidential candidate to have come of age after the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and '70s. Americans who reached adulthood before or during the Cultural Revolution often differ over the big events of recent history. Americans who came of age…
How can I teach my students to write decently when the English language has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Academic-Industrial Complex? Our language used to belong to all its speakers and readers and writers. But in the 1970s and '80s, arrogant ideologues began recasting English into heavy…
Jews and Power
A middle school in Portland, Maine, decided recently that it would hand out birth-control pills to girls as young as 11; no parental consent required. Strippers were invited to participate (fully clothed) in this year's "Haunted Halloween Carnival Benefit" at a New York City middle school.…
The Norman Invasion was the talk of New York in the late 1950s and early '60s. Norman Podhoretz gave the definitive brief account of his co-Norman's character and personality in Ex-Friends; and it wasn't pretty. But it's fair to point out, nonetheless, that Mailer transformed himself by sheer force…
To prepare for General David Petraeus's long-awaited testimony on Iraq to Congress last week, the liberal pressure group MoveOn.org wrote itself into the history books with an anti-Petraeus ad so repulsive it ranked with Lyndon Johnson's infamous 1964 TV spot in the campaign against Barry…
Should America have public schools, or would we do better without them? Nothing is more important to this country than the transformation of children into educated American citizens. That's what public schools are for, and no institutions are better suited to the role--in principle. They used to…
Jews and Gentiles
Israeli government authorities are building a ramp to allow non-Muslims to reach the enormous platform atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The old access ramp was condemned as unsafe and torn down several years ago. The interim ramp that replaced it was designed for short-term service only.…
"I have spelled out good reasons for Americans to be impatient with our war in Iraq, good reasons for us to ask more of our Iraqi allies, good reasons to change our own plans. We must fight this war the best and smartest way we can. But realism is a two-way street. So now let me tell you why I am…
"Rejoice not when thy enemy falleth"--that is the Bible's advice (Proverbs 24:17), and the classical rabbinic tradition cites this verse in urging us never to celebrate the death of an enemy no matter how evil. But Americans have plenty to celebrate in the trial and punishment of Saddam Hussein by…
PAMELA WAECHTER was murdered at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle on Friday, July 28--an American who was born a Lutheran and reared in Minneapolis, a middle-aged mother, a convert to Judaism who became a leader in Seattle's Jewish community. Pamela Waechter. Do not stamp her "hate crime"…
FOR YEARS I have watched the Palestinians do absurdly self-destructive things, and have never understood them until now. But watching the Bush administration stoutly defend Israel this week against the background of an American Jewish population that vocally (often sneeringly) dislikes him and his…
The Moral Imagination
NOT LONG AGO RICHARD COHEN of the Washington Post wrote a column about Iraq headlined "As in Vietnam, dereliction of duty all over again." The Vietnam analogy has been part of the Iraq war story since the fighting started (in fact, since before it started). The Bush administration often deals with…
FEBRUARY'S COMMENTARY has one of the most frightening essays of recent years, in which James Q. Wilson makes the case that Americans are polarized to an unprecedented extent; bitterly divided. Responsible conservatives should confront this problem and show the country how to solve it. Not to solve…
SOMETIMES WORDS TELL THE TRUTH on purpose; sometimes they give it away by accident. Both things happened last week in mid-Palo Alto, down the road from Stanford University, ground zero of Silicon Valley--where pale pink plum-blossoms bloom in February and Ferraris are as common as Pontiacs in…
We are supposed to be living in the "Information Age." If we are, exactly what topic are people so well--informed about? Video games? The same experts who know for sure that we are in mid--Information Age take it for granted that young people are colossally uninformed. And young people are more…
FOUR THEMES FLOW TOGETHER AT one of the most remarkable points in American history--the evening when Abraham Lincoln for the last time proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving. It was April 11, 1865: two days after the Civil War ended with Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox; four days before…
ROBERT NATKIN IS A PAST master of American painting, a national treasure in his mid-seventies who is still inventing new ways to paint while enjoying his position at the pinnacle.
The first issue of this magazine appeared in September 1995, part way through the Clinton administration, and less than a year after the Republican victory in the congressional elections of 1994. The pressing foreign policy issue of the day was Bosnia. The world seems a very different place today.…
A REPORT JUST ISSUED BY the Bible Literacy Project (more on this later) suggests that young Americans know very little about the Bible. The report is important, but first things first: A fair number of Americans don't see why teenagers should know anything at all about the Bible.
MAKOTO FUJIMURA'S PAINTINGS ARE A joyful gusher from a well that had long run dry--or so the world assumed. Abstract expressionism has yielded little that is new in recent years. Granted, some distinguished abstract painters who made their mark in the 1950s and 1960s continued to paint in the new…
BENJAMIN DISRAELI--TWICE PRIME minister of Great Britain, romantic novelist, inventor of modern conservatism--was a neocon in the plain sense of the word, a "new conservative" who began his career on the left. Conservative thinking dates to the dawn of organized society, but modern conservatism--a…
GEORGE W. BUSH IS a strong, clear-minded president--one of the strongest and clearest-minded we have ever had. Why can't a great president give a great speech?
ON ELECTION DAY, Establishment big shots were certain that America wanted change and that the suave, sophisticated challenger had to beat the blunt, plain, downright embarrassing incumbent. All day long they were certain. At midnight the famous radio commentator H.V. Kaltenborn summed up the…
JOHN KERRY is famously hard to pin down; you can reach out to grasp his opinion only to find that it has flitted away like a bashful butterfly, or a goldfish you are trying to catch with your bare hands. But nowadays his pronouncements and campaign ads are easy to read. They suggest that Iraq is…
IT'S OBVIOUS not only that George W. Bush has already earned his Great President badge (which might even outrank the Silver Star) but that much of the opposition to Bush has a remarkable and very special quality; one might be tempted to call it "lunacy." But that's too easy. The "special quality"…
FOLLOWING the long-ago apocalypse of World War I, the world seemed like a shellshocked battle-casualty remolded by surgeons into something new and terrible. For generations afterward, into the Second World War and out the other side, most people were afraid to look; nearly everyone was scared to…
THESE ARE TIMES when President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld could probably use some encouragement. They should ponder a short note by Anthony Eden to Winston Churchill. It was May 1941 and World War II was going badly. Churchill was Britain's Bush and Rumsfeld, prime minister and minister of…
I HEAR AND READ ALL THE TIME about Democratic fury; evidently, enraged Democrats are prepared to do whatever it takes to rid the country of George W. Bush's foul presence. Somehow Republican rage doesn't seem quite as newsworthy (and when it does show up, the storyline is usually "Republicans Angry…
U.S. POLICY IN IRAQ is haunted by Vietnam, no question about that. That's why Americans support the war and will keep on supporting it until we win. ("Win" is a verb you rarely heard in the Vietnam era.) We are haunted by the image of Vietnamese who trusted and supported us trying frantically to…
LIEUTENANT GENERAL William Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and a highly decorated officer, has intimated that the United States is a Christian country and that he is, himself, a Christian. Journalists across the nation are shocked and horrified. Apparently the general has…
ON IRAQ the administration likes to talk interest, not duty. "We did ourselves and the world a favor." But interest is always arguable; duty can be absolutely clear. Torture, mass murder, and hellish tyranny make for the clearest case possible. Yet too often the administration has sounded hesitant…
EMAIL is a slippery medium. For example: Is it good or bad for the art of writing? Both. It devalues the written word; email is so fast and easy to send, correspondents exchange semi-articulate gibberings without a second thought. There used to be good letter writers, but there don't seem to be any…
ROUGHLY SIX YEARS AGO I gave a talk at a D.C. think tank complaining that it was outrageous for the conservative community (that vigorous, virile young beast) to allow New York City to subsist on the thin gruel of the New York Times Book Review and the New York Review of Books, both left of center.…
"YOUR COUNTRY sinks beneath Jewish-Anglo-American bombs. Your parents lie amid the ruins. Come avenge them." That might be a quote from the Iraqi information minister; it comes in fact from a leaflet printed by the SS and discovered in liberated Cologne, March 1945. The similarities between Iraq on…
A RUMSFELD ANSWER at a press conference revealed an easy-to-fix yet important problem with the administration's view of the war.
IF IT WERE WORKING PROPERLY, a world organization like the United Nations could offer the United States official sanction for an upcoming bout, and assure the world that the heavyweight champion (no matter what kind of lowlife he is up against) will play by the rules and rein himself in; will hit…
RETURN TO THE END of the Gulf War, when we did not go to Baghdad. The wave was taking us there, but we stepped off. To go on would have offended our coalition partners, and contradicted our original plans. So we stopped short. Stepped off history's rolling breaker. Have regretted it ever since.
MANY PEOPLE HAVE NOTICED similarities between our dealings with Iraq today and with Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis. Castro and Saddam are volatile, dangerous tyrants we had hoped the locals would get rid of, with some help from their friends. But it didn't work out that way; the Bay of Pigs…
ARCHITECTURE is politics by other means--at least some of the time. An emerging architectural story in Jerusalem is, in part, wonderful news; in part, a tragic missed opportunity. Recently the Jerusalem Post ran a story on a project that is bound to attract plenty of attention before long: the…
ON NOVEMBER 11, 1920, there was a strange and moving scene in London. The king and his entourage unveiled the Cenotaph in Whitehall and laid solemnly to rest, in Westminster Abbey, an unknown soldier of the Great War. The ceremony had been carefully planned. The whole nation came to a transfixed…
AT SOME POINT ISRAELIS are likely to start asking themselves: Why should we continue to let TV reporters and news photographers take pictures of terrorist murder scenes? Of dead and maimed Israelis, shocked bystanders, grieving families, blood in the streets? Who gave TV cameras the right to be…
THE STATEMENTS BELOW of Goering, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Hoess, Shirach, Sauckel, and Streicher in and out of court during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial are quoted verbatim from G.M. Gilbert, "Nuremberg Diary," 1947. Goering was Reich marshal. Ribbentrop was foreign minister.…
A PHILOSOPHER'S JOB is to show you what you would otherwise miss because it is right in front of your nose, too close to focus on. In one of Mel Brooks's worst, funniest movies, he played a "stand-up philosopher," and we could use some stand-up philosophy right now. Have you ever wondered (a…
A PHILOSOPHER'S JOB is to show you what you would otherwise miss because it is right in front of your nose, too close to focus on. In one of Mel Brooks's worst, funniest movies, he played a "stand-up philosopher," and we could use some stand-up philosophy right now. Have you ever wondered (a…
ISRAEL IS IN BIG TROUBLE with nearly the whole enlightened world--European "peace activists" and Arab diplomats and Zbigniew Brzezinski and all sorts of mainstream American journalists--for not allowing Palestinian terrorists to kill its citizens with impunity. The Europeans rushed to the West Bank…
WE OUGHT TO FACE squarely the origins of the Palestinian descent into barbarism. In July 2000, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak made a peace offer that stunned Israel and the world: Israel would re-divide Jerusalem--would turn over large pieces of its ancient capital to the same people who had…
WE OUGHT TO FACE squarely the origins of the Palestinian descent into barbarism. In July 2000, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak made a peace offer that stunned Israel and the world: Israel would re-divide Jerusalem--would turn over large pieces of its ancient capital to the same people who had…
Well into his forties he was largely unknown, but by the time he died -- this year, on February 18, at age ninety-two -- Balthasar Klossowski was the most celebrated artist in the world. He called himself "Balthus," a frenchified version of a childhood nickname. His parents were Poles (his mother a…
James Salter's novel Cassada tells a story that rushes toward you with the cool hellishness of a treetopskimming jet fighter, then fills the sky overhead and is gone, leaving an unforgettable rustle of thunder uncoiling behind. It is a brilliant novel that in some ways resembles The Great Gatsby: a…
America Before T.V.
Rembrandt's Eyes
Isaiah Berlin's "The Hedgehog and the Fox" is one of this century's most famous essays -- a virtuoso performance in which Berlin lays down his convenient distinction between two basic intellectual personalities, foxes and hedgehogs. Berlin's main topic is Tolstoy's historical thinking in light of…
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION seems to be entering a new phase: As the public turns against it, universities are growing increasingly desperate in their support. I teach at Yale, where the administration has made it clear that (in particular) it wants more female professors in technology and the hard…
It's past time to consider America's Second World War fighting airplanes as a body of artwork -- one of the most remarkable the world has ever seen. As artworks they are arresting and the best are gorgeous, and they have the overwhelming importance, here and now, of Banquo's ghost. They represent…
In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"
I spend part of my time in the art world and part sulking among technologists. The technology world has loads of energy but not enough ideas. The art world has ideas but not enough energy. The "conservative" art world is especially energy-deprived -- the community that believes in the spiritual…
Yellow is the cruelest color. Seemingly extroverted and gay, it expects to be treated like a prima donna, or it will go to pieces. It is too easily corrupted. The barest touch of black or graphite turns it dirty, grudging green. The eye can distinguish a million bright reds, greens, and purples,…
Where does art stand today? Where is it headed? The art world is dark and stormy, visibility is zero, and apocalyptic predictions split the air. Most thoughtful people have barred the door against contemporary art in hopes it will blow over -- which is understandable.
Where does art stand today? Where is it headed? The art world is dark and stormy, visibility is zero, and apocalyptic predictions split the air. Most thoughtful people have barred the door against contemporary art in hopes it will blow over -- which is understandable.
Any man who has the capacity to make art also has the capacity to destroy it, and Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) was a master-artist of destruction. Successful artists are usually high-pressure, steam-driven personalities. When such people get angry at their work, they hit hard. Thus Michelangelo…
For sheer dazzling gorgeousness, precious few man-made objects hold their own against the paintings of Titian, the long-lived and enormously productive sixteenth-century Venetian, creator of the celebrates Assunta, the Baccus and Ariadne, the Venus of Urbino, and dozens of other masterpieces. The…
There never were any group meetings among us targets of the so-called Unabomber, but we nearly had one in Sacramento on the day the trial began. The FBI had set up a "witness room" where we could gather and get briefed, away from the press. Most of the survivors were on hand, together with other…
A local synagogue held a big shindig recently, and I realized in the course of it that talk-show hosting is America's number one performance art.
Saul Bellow
Robert Hughes of Time magazine, most celebrated art critic of the age, has made an irritating, interesting TV series called American Visions that is now showing on PBS. Eight hour-long segments cover the history of American art from colonial times to the present. The close of the last episode finds…
Toward the end of March a couple of mourning doves joined the crowd of winter birds eating seed on our back deck, and we knew it was spring. Mourning doves are like robins: They can survive the cold weather without going south, but you don't ordinarily see them around our Connecticut suburb during…
A perfect fact to remember us by, we "post-moderns" or whatever we are: When we say that entertainment is "adult," we mean it is infantile. The pictorial spelling-out of exactly what happens when a couple goes to bed is in the "Billy learns how to tie his shoes" spirit of edifying books for…
MAKING IT POSSIBLE FOR EVERY 12-year-old to "log on to the Internet" is one of President Clinton's main goals for the schools. The Democrats would be foolish to waste this occasion for another helpful, informative TV ad, so here is a suggested script:
YOU WILL BE shocked to learn that architecture critic Paul Goldberger of the New York Times does not believe New York City ought to pine for its long-lost world's-tallest-building title. But it's lucky the Empire State Building wasn't constructed the way his argument is, or it would have collapsed…
Several months ago, in an article for THE WEEKLY STANDARD called "The Radware: A Not-All-That-Modest Proposal," I suggested that conservatives should stop complaining about culture and do something about it: should create new institutions, starting with a museum. The museum's curators would dazzle…
James Patterson's Grand Expectations is intriguing not as a work of history so much as a piece of history. It is the 1945-1974 volume of Oxford's History of the United States (829 pages, $ 35), and it reveals (like shale to a paleontologist) a tremendous lot about the world in which it was made. At…
By the late 1940s Pablo Picasso was convinced he could turn lead into gold, and he was right: He bought things (houses included) with pictures instead of money, and people fought over his merest tablecloth doodle. His transformation into history's only successful alchemist had an amazing effect. He…
The six "Ashcan" artists painted New York City with headlong ardor and limited subtlety starting around the turn of the century; George Bellows, Robert Henri, and John Sloan are the big names. They petered out gradually in the wake of the 1913 Armory show, which introduced Americans to the Fauves…
The six "Ashcan" artists painted New York City with headlong ardor and limited subtlety starting around the turn of the century; George Bellows, Robert Henri, and John Sloan are the big names. They petered out gradually in the wake of the 1913 Armory show, which introduced Americans to the Fauves…
American culture is collapsing, and it is the Right's fault. The Left is out there fighting and we are not; the Left operates the institutions that deliver culture to the public. The New York Times and the Smithsonian take their cases to the people. We talk only to each other. If we had any guts…
The most moving objects in the current exhibition of Winslow Homer's work are not the paintings at all, but a pair of banged-up paint boxes in a display case. They seem to have soaked up considerable love. Homer never succeeded in getting a wife, though apparently he was in love at least once.…