November 12, 2018

The illusory dream of democratic socialism lives again.

On the interment of Matthew Shepard at the National Cathedral.

Is Saudi Arabia’s crown prince joining a long line of absolutist rulers in the Middle East?

In the days since Robert Bowers murdered 11 congregants inside the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Americans have contemplated and debated the most urgent questions in our common life. There has been mercifully little discussion of gun laws. Observers on both sides have grasped that these…

The NRCC takes a stand.

The shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue—11 dead, 6 wounded—was especially shocking: It was the most lethal attack on Jews in American history. At the same it reminded us how disconcertingly commonplace mass violence has become. In February, 17 people were gunned down at a high school in Florida, and…

The polarization of American politics has done its work and we now have an especially ugly example of where it leads. I’m referring to the fight over the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as a justice of the Supreme Court.

“I wasn’t born chancellor,” said German leader Angela Merkel in an ad for her 2009 reelection campaign. She repeated the phrase in late October at a press conference to announce her coming resignation as chairman of her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Recent state elections have…

Do customers resist businesses that #Resist?

It’s no longer Voltaire’s Europe.

The plot to get Mueller.

Christoph Irmscher on the strange, lifelong discomfort of the author of ‘Siddhartha’ and ‘Steppenwolf.’

Alan Jacobs on the maps that guide writers and readers through fictional worlds.

Paula Deitz on how a New York physician planted the seeds of American medical botany.

Micah Mattix on how Robert Louis Stevenson came to live, die, and be buried in Samoa.

Phil Christman on the Hulu film ‘Minding the Gap’: Three young skateboarders rewrite their destinies.

Were admission to Harvard based solely on academic merit, Asian-Americans would comprise 43% of the freshman class, while African-Americans would make up less than 1%, according to an internal Harvard report discussed at a trial here Wednesday.” That’s the sobering lede of a Wall Street Journal…

Russian operatives may be feeding preposterous fictions to gullible Americans on Facebook, but at least our countrymen don’t believe in “statuesque superhuman blonde Baltic snipers in tight white outfits.” In his invaluable daily digest, Windows on Eurasia, the Russia scholar Paul Goble reminds…

One of the most underreported asininities of modern American politics is the existence of political “consultancies” that rake in money from candidates, fail to get those candidates into office, then go on to rake in even more money from other candidates. Consider:

Does 12 or 13 count as an early age to become disillusioned? Maybe it was once on the young side for lost innocence. On the other hand, maybe I was just a slow learner.