Walter Berns, who died last week at 95, was a scholar who spoke for a more serious and more confident America. He did his best service in the 1960s and ’70s, when America was at its least sober and self-confident.
NOW THAT EVERYONE AGREES we are at "war," it is time to think seriously about what that means. The usual voices—from the European Union and its various agents of influence in America—warn us about the importance of "international cooperation." Americans who are eager to fight back may be tempted,…
Across the Middle East, there is concern about the nuclear deal with Iran. By releasing frozen assets and removing economic sanctions, the deal seems to facilitate renewed aggression. Won’t that encourage more violence from Iranian terror proxies, like Hezbollah and Hamas? The international…
President Obama’s deal with Iran is not even called an “agreement.” Technically, it’s a “joint comprehensive plan of action,” a mushy term adopted precisely to avoid the implication that it’s a formally binding agreement. In truth, it’s more like the sort of coordinated “plan of action” that…
The Commerce Department issued a low-key bureaucratic announcement on March 14: The government will not renew its contract with the Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers (ICANN), under which ICANN has administered the Internet’s domain name system since the mid-1990s. U.S. government…
When President Obama addressed the U.N. General Assembly last September, he spoke about the importance of removing chemical weapons from Syria and emphasized that President Assad must give way to a more broadly accepted government. He did not mention human rights. He also spoke about his hopes for…
It now seems to be the general consensus that President Obama’s Syria policy is a contradictory mess. But that’s only how it appears on the surface. Probe a bit deeper and it’s very seriously deranged.
It now seems to be the general consensus that President Obama’s Syria policy is a contradictory mess. But that’s only how it appears on the surface. Probe a bit deeper and it’s very seriously deranged.
When James Q. Wilson published Bureaucracy in 1989, Daniel Patrick Moynihan toasted it as Wilson’s “summa” and Wilson himself as “our Weber.” Like many pronouncements of Moynihan’s, that tribute was grand, right for the moment—but not quite right. What James Q. Wilson had in common with the…
Amidst his other pronouncements on Mideast peace in late May, President Obama warned Palestinians they couldn’t get their state by a show of hands at the United Nations. Soon after, Israeli officials predicted that the Palestinian Authority would pursue its case at the U.N. in September. It’s a…
For more than a week now, U.S. warships have been tailing a North Korean vessel suspected of carrying illegal weapons while it sails round in circles off the coast of China. The latest U.N. Security Council resolution on North Korea (RES. 1874) has proved to be nothing to laugh at, and may well…
The Spanish Inquisition was established in the late 15th century to stamp out heretical deviations from Catholicism. By the time it petered out in the early 19th century, the Inquisition had expanded to cover political deviants. It is this latter tradition that Spanish judge Baltasar…
Defending Identity
I said the proceedings were "slightly demented." I was being polite. I was one of two witnesses invited by the Republican members to testify at the House Judiciary Committee's hearings on "executive power and constitutional limitations" on July 25. The event was more accurately described by one of…
On October 1962, President Kennedy ordered the U.S. Navy to prevent foreign ships from reaching Cuba unless they submitted to U.S. inspections on the high seas to verify that they were not transporting missiles or other offensive weapons to the island. Similar measures had been adopted in wartime…
IT IS HARDLY CONCEIVABLE that Donald Rumsfeld will end up serving a prison sentence in some modern counterpart of Spandau Prison, where the Nuremberg defendants served out their terms.
America Alone
At the outset of the current war in Lebanon, governments in Europe protested that Israel's response was "disproportionate." The U.N. human rights commissioner, Louise Arbour, endorsing this claim, spoke darkly of Israeli "war crimes." I happened to be at a conference in mid-July where there were a…
IT IS NOT WISE to place yourself between a Stinger missile and its target. So, normally, I wouldn't dare stand in the way when the great Mark Steyn goes on the attack. But, like a lot of conservatives, he was so irritated by the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that he fired a bit…
PRESUMABLY, IT WAS NOT quite the debate Justice Ginsburg had in mind. But then, it's not clear that what she really wanted was a debate. Maybe we should have one, anyway.
Berlin
AFTER THE COLLAPSE of communism in the early 1990s, visionaries foresaw a new global consensus. After the "end of history" came, logically, the end of sovereignty. Why would the world need independent governments when everyone agreed on fundamental questions?
AFTER A YEAR of internal debate, the Bush administration announced a decision last week: The United States would no longer consider itself a signatory to the Rome Treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. The world barely reacted. The American media yawned. The policy decision was not…
IN THE MIDDLE EAST, reality intrudes rather quickly. The dreams of diplomats are regularly blown to pieces by bombings and bullets. Elsewhere, reality sometimes takes longer to penetrate. This is especially so in the European Union, which has now displaced U.N. headquarters as the global center of…
IT HAS BEEN A BUSY SUMMER for European diplomats and for the human rights activists who dance to the Euro-beat. They have been much exercised about dangers to global stability. The main danger, they seem to think, comes from the United States. Europeans want to stop global warming and stand up for…
MARY ANN GLENDON HOLDS A DISTINGUISHED CHAIR at Harvard Law School. Yet she has published such eloquent protests against the moral arrogance of judges and lawyers as Rights Talk and A Nation Under Lawyers. She served as the Vatican's representative to the U.N.'s major international conference on…
BACK IN 1992, when asked how he would deal with Iraqi aggression, Bill Clinton said he would have voted with the congressional majority to authorize a military response, but he remained personally opposed to military action. A decade later, as he prepared to leave the White House, President Clinton…
With a jumble of controversial rulings at the end of June, the Supreme Court offered its last pronouncements of the Clinton era. By the time the Court hands down any major new rulings, a new president will be in office. Perhaps the timing encouraged the justices to let themselves go. Taken…
AT UNITED NATIONS headquarters in New York last week, diplomats from around the world were trying to work out remaining details for the proposed International Criminal Court. U.S. ambassador David Scheffer tried to persuade other nations to include, among these details, some assurance that no…
THE Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) sailed through Congress with overwhelming majorities in 1994. Who could oppose a federal statute supposed to counter misogynist violence?
Constitutional Interpretation
As a teacher of political philosophy, Professor Lowenthal raises questions that are very much worthy of discussion. But like Aristotle's defense of monarchy or Rousseau's plan for radical democracy, Lowenthal's proposal should be raised in an academic seminar. As an actual policy program, it is far…
Clarence Thomas understands "the politics of personal destruction." After President Bush nominated him to succeed Thur-good Marshall on the Supreme Court, liberals threw a fit. With no evidence of felonious conduct from a special prosecutor, Thomas's opponents had to make the most of a single…
These are disorienting times for social conservatives. It has been hard enough to rally Americans on such contentious issues as abortion. Now we can't even seem to agree on the moral status of perjury.
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?"
Richard Epstein, one of the great legal scholars of his generation, describes Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good, as a defense of "laissez faire." It certainly offers many illuminating and compelling analyses of particular legal issues, but as a…
When British authorities arrested the former dictator of Chile, General Augusto Pinochet, in London last month, the story made front-page news around the world. The episode deserved the attention, but its real significance escaped the notice of editorial writers. What is at stake in this drama is…
Paul Campos
David Lowenthal
Republicans have been doing a lot of snarling against the United Nations in the past year. And Republican congressional leaders are promising to translate this mood into legislation over the next few months. Some of the energy on these issues reflects legitimate concerns. A lot of it surely is…
In the run-up to the 1994 elections, Democratic spokesmen frequently warned of the sinister influence of the "Christian right" on the Republican party. But warnings about an impending theocratic tyranny did not make much impression on the voters. Such alarums seem to have been quietly dropped by…
Cornell University was the setting for one of the most notorious episodes of campus upheaval during the great era of campus upheavals in the late 1960s. Armed students took over the student union building in the spring of 1969, while thousands of other students rallied in their support. Top…
David Souter, stealth candidate -- that was the soundbite in the summer of 1990, when President Bush announced the unknown New Hampshire judge's surprise nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. "Stealth candidate" stuck to Souter throughout that summer and during his confirmation hearings. That tag…