Liberals and progressives sometimes complain that Republicans win more elections, and they do. But cheer up, lefties—you’ve got a lock on the nation’s elite colleges. The thought occurred to us when we read through Homogeneous: The Political Affiliations of Elite Liberal Arts College Faculty, a new…
On election night 2016, political activist Jess Self wasn’t in much of a partying mood. She’d just spent four days knocking on doors in neighboring Nevada. Her efforts helped elect a Democratic U.S. senator and representative and pass two controversial ballot measures.
Breaking: The New York Times is now a “white supremacist paper.” That’s according to Sarah Kendzior, columnist for Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper, frequent NBC News contributor, and writer for Fast Company. Talk about all the news that’s fit to print!
In France, all right-thinking people know instinctively what the pensée unique is—the socially acceptable view on any subject that ensures a Parisian won’t get axed from the better dinner parties and weekends in Normandy. The Democratic party, which remains a more coherent concatenation than the…
Just when it seemed as if the election of Donald Trump had rendered his supporters incoherent with triumphalism and his detractors incoherent with rage—thereby dumbing-down political conversation for a long time to come—something different and more interesting happened. A genuine debate has sprung…
Just when it seemed as if the election of Donald Trump had rendered his supporters incoherent with triumphalism and his detractors incoherent with rage—thereby dumbing-down political conversation for a long time to come—something different and more interesting happened. A genuine debate has sprung…
“Over the years,” wrote the editors of the New York Times, “the gun lobby, claiming to defend the convenience of hunters and other gun owners, has so bullied Washington that . . . sensible proposals seem beyond reach. But as gun mayhem continues to mount, the political roadblock looks less and less…
Journalist Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza has earned a coveted place in the annals of silly lawsuits. She covers “Trump and the law” at the magazine Pacific Standard and is currently suing the president for blocking her on Twitter.
In the heart of Wall Street, a new statue is causing quite a kerfuffle. Sponsored by State Street Global Advisors, one of the world’s largest asset-management firms, the "Fearless Girl" was installed earlier this year to stand in front of the famous "Charging Bull" in Bowling Green Park, just a…
In the heart of Wall Street, a new statue is causing quite a kerfuffle. Sponsored by State Street Global Advisors, one of the world's largest asset-management firms, the "Fearless Girl" was installed earlier this year to stand in front of the famous "Charging Bull" in Bowling Green Park, just a…
While left-wing Western leaders celebrate the late Fidel Castro—whitewashing much of Cuba's recent history in the process—it's worth remembering how total and insidious the Communist dictator's tyrannical regime was for the Cuban people. Over the years, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has documented some of…
Over at Slate Jamelle Bouie has been on a tear about how racist Donald Trump and all of his voters are. His case is not especially nuanced: "White Won" and "There's No Such Thing as a Good Trump Voter." You can read Bouie's arguments in depth if you like, but the headlines give you a pretty good…
One of the weirder aspects of anti-Trump mania is its sniffy tone. And it's especially weird coming from card-carrying liberal Democrats. For two generations our culture and its institutions have been living under a liberal ascendency. The country's elites—the Bigs of the news media and Hollywood…
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio again refused to endorse his former boss, Hillary Clinton. He made the comments this morning on CBS:
From Beijing to London to Washington to other points on the map of this globalized economy, “inequality” has become a hot topic. China has its own methods of handling those the regime’s leaders feel have engaged in excessively conspicuous consumption. But show trials and re-education are tools not…
Democrats have moved to the left in the Obama era. And if the party’s base, President Obama, and Senator Elizabeth Warren have their way, they will move even further to the left in the next two years. Liberals will rejoice, but there’s a downside. The Democratic nominee will have a considerably…
"So-called ‘sand movies,’ the term Hollywood sometimes uses for films set in Afghanistan and Iraq, have a terrible box office track record,” noted the New York Times. Or rather, they had a terrible box office track record. The release of American Sniper, a biopic about Iraq war veteran and…
1. The Return of Original Sin
I don’t like to make too much of all the celebrity heirs who, in an extremely down media market, somehow keep on snagging major journalism gigs. It makes me sound bitter and envious and uncharitable, all of which I sort of am. But how can anyone help it? All the so-called smart people who run the…
"Ruth Bader Ginsburg Is an American Hero," reads the headline in the New Republic. But despite talking to an "American Hero," Jeffrey Rosen, the magazine's legal affairs editor, still wants to know whether the Supreme Court justice will hang up her robe.
On July 16-19, the online progressive community held its annual “Netroots Nation” conference in Detroit. The irony of holding such an event in a desiccated husk of a formerly great metropolis undone by unionism and unfettered liberal governance was mostly lost on the crowd, and the gathering made…
The City University of New York must really be rolling in dough. The school’s administration recently turned down a $10 million grant from the Koch brothers to establish a new financial center at Brooklyn College. The business dean explained that he would have to focus on the school’s accreditation…
Democrats habitually congratulate themselves on being the brainy party. They’re rational and rely on empirical evidence for their views. Or so they insist. And they strongly believe in science and are quick to accuse Republicans of being antiscience—that is, dopey and inclined to fall for…
Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:
Obamacare may or may not survive its inauspicious beginnings. It has become dangerously unpopular and accident-prone and faces a minefield of difficulties. Still, the Obama administration has a plausible strategy: to titrate the program’s numerous taxes, subsidies, mandates, and restrictions so as…
Melbourne
The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll indicates that the only group of Americans who remain strongly supportive of Obamacare are self-described “liberal Democrats.” Even “moderate or conservative” Democrats have started to jump ship en masse — as they’re now more likely to oppose Obamacare than…
Last August a 28-year-old gay-rights volunteer named Floyd Corkins entered the office lobby of the Family Research Council (FRC), a Christian traditional-values group headquartered in Washington that condemns homosexual conduct and opposes same-sex marriage. Corkins took a gun from his backpack and…
"With Obama-care entrenched, Democrats feel free to gripe,” read the headline in Politico. And gripe is the word. Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington gripes that the administration won’t subsidize Americans “just above the poverty level.” Senator Bill Nelson of Florida gripes that the…
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had a funny piece about political mixed marriages. It opened with an anecdote about a husband and wife who belong to different parties and the dilemma they faced during a presidential election. The husband was going to be traveling on Election Day, so he gave his…
This month, the Los Angeles city council is expected to ban single-use plastic bags. “[T]he ban is an attempt by the city to reduce litter,” says the Los Angeles Daily News. But it is likely to reduce something else: jobs.
Why are America’s political, media, and intellectual classes engaged in a head-spinning debate over inequality? Beats us. The difference in incomes between rich and poor is neither the most important issue facing the country nor even a pressing one. Certainly the public doesn’t think so. Recent…
"God, I love ’em,” wrote Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post not long after the glorious dawning of Occupy Wall Street, saying that the protests “arise at just the right moment and are aimed at just the right target” to grow into something quite big. Apparently, the stench from McPherson Square…
The tendency of liberals to define the Republican party, the conservative movement, and most recently the Tea Party movement as the latest iteration of the Old South has been persistent, if not always sane. It survived the failure to convince voters that Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were…
In April 2008, days after saying that voters in western Pennsylvania were inclined to cling to religion and guns out of bitterness, Senator Barack Obama sat down for an interview with the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to try to fix some of the damage his remark had done to his…
Sometimes talking with liberals is perplexing. You never know what claim they will make next or what name they will call you. Take David Axelrod’s response to Standard & Poor’s recent credit action: He calls it the “Tea Party downgrade.” Amazingly, he blames the United States’ loss of its AAA bond…
Senate majority leader Harry Reid picked his three representatives to the twelve congressional member supercommittee yesterday, selecting Max Baucus, John Kerry, and Patty Murray. The first two choices make sense: Baucus is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Kerry was the Democratic…
The way Alyssa Kent described the work of her school’s environmental group, Campus Greens, was almost quaint. “We’re building a garden, and we’re going to supply the lettuce that we grow to the school cafeteria,” said Kent, a junior at Wells College in Aurora, New York. “And we’re about to start a…
On the day Paul Ryan released his budget proposal, I went to Judson Memorial Church in New York City to gauge the left’s reaction. Judson Memorial was hosting “Fight Back USA,” where one could get tips on “fighting austerity, debt, and corporate greed” and listen to progressive superstars Frances…
If you want to see how liberals age, visit Washington D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose. Conservative columnist David Brooks braved the crowd there Wednesday tonight, touting his latest book, The Social Animal. Brooks’ favored-son status among the liberal intelligentsia slightly diminishes the…
Liberals are not pleased with President Obama's tax deal with congressional Republicans. There have been multiple suggestions that he risks a liberal revolt, and that he could wind up like Jimmy Carter. Matt Bai of the New York Times writes: