Censorship was once so simple. Kings, emperors, hierarchs, dictators stifled free expression to protect their authority. They decided what ideas were dangerous; organized a network of schoolteachers, priests, and informers to sniff out expressions of these ideas; then hired policemen, judges, and…
Censorship was once so simple. Kings, emperors, hierarchs, dictators stifled free expression to protect their authority. They decided what ideas were dangerous; organized a network of schoolteachers, priests, and informers to sniff out expressions of these ideas; then hired policemen, judges, and…
This was not how the cautious, self-disciplined Prime Minister Theresa May was supposed to sound. "Yesterday I laid out the first step of an ambitious plan to set Britain on the path to being the great meritocracy of the world," she wrote in the September 9 Daily Mail. "It is a vision of a Britain…
This was not how the cautious, self-disciplined Prime Minister Theresa May was supposed to sound. “Yesterday I laid out the first step of an ambitious plan to set Britain on the path to being the great meritocracy of the world," she wrote in the September 9 Daily Mail. "It is a vision of a Britain…
Alexander Kaplen died December 16, 2015, at the age of 56. He was 31 when I last saw him on March 5, 1991, about 5:30 p.m. I know the time because I had rushed to the bank in a taxi with $8,000 in cash. The money was the Wigwag Magazine Company’s share of the auction proceeds of the magazine's hard…
This attentive, magnificently written, and profoundly researched biography of Henry Kissinger before he took office is stunningly good, and stuns as much for what it does not say as what it does. Earlier Kissinger biographers have tried to comprehend him, not quite in order to forgive his crimes…
France’s momentary appearance on the world stage as a champion of free expression, after the execution of the beloved Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, made for a break in her relentless culture of repression of free speech, which she shares with most of Europe. Aside from a handful of…
Two weeks ago, the British press broke the news contained in Professor Alexis Jay’s “Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham.” Between 1997 and 2013, Jay estimated, 1,400 young girls in that Yorkshire town were exploited: gang-raped, trafficked to other cities, threatened,…
Martha Bayles, one of the great unsung critics of the baby boom generation, has written a book that is unusual for her. This is a brisk, how-policy-has-gone-wrong-and-what-to-do-about-it book, which conceals in its pages something more: a brilliant and courageous meditation on the difficulty of…
London
Geert Wilders, the big-gesture Dutch politician who has made a career out of outspoken enthusiasms and denunciations in a country which is careful of its speech, has begun to take on water. In the June 2010 election, the Freedom party, which Wilders created five years earlier, was the third-biggest…
As Maine is New England’s Texas, France is Europe’s U.S.A. It’s big. It’s ornery. Like us, the French are notably more inward-looking than Europe’s other populous, geographically big, and prosperous states. Despite France’s co-leadership of the European unification project, a new German Marshall…
Last month, the Canadian journalist Richard Klagsbrun drew attention to a newly submitted Master’s thesis at the University of Toronto’s ed school: “The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education.” Proud author Jennifer Peto told a reporter for…
When I finally accepted the fact that I was to be an unmarried man of 47, the first call that came offering to introduce me to a woman was from my then friend, Taki Theodoracopulos (politics has since parted us). I didn’t know that it was to be the only such call I would ever receive in more than…
Since January, the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, Beach Boy-haired founder and leader of the Freedom Party (PVV), has been on trial in Amsterdam for inciting hatred against Muslims and Holland’s recent Moroccan immigrants, for inciting discrimination against Muslims, and for insulting Muslims.…
The W. Kendall Myers treason story--the retired State Department gent and never-published scholar whose 30 years of skillful espionage on Cuba's behalf has recently come to the notice of the authorities--has already produced one great benefit. Not for some years have we seen newspaper writing like…
There is a new consensus on gay marriage: not on whether it should be legalized but about the motives of those of us who oppose it. All agree that any and all opposition to gay marriage is explained either by biblical literalism or anti-homosexual bigotry. This consensus is brilliantly constructed…
President Obama's appointees, so diverse in many ways, have certain underlying similarities. In the standard categories of race, age, and sex, they are as diverse as any administration's before them--though they adhere to a standard of good looks quite unlike the most recent Democratic…
To the relief of his friends and the consternation of his doubters, President Obama found his presidential voice last week in his congressional address. "It came a bit late, but Barack Obama finally gave his inaugural address," Richard Cohen rejoiced on his Washington Post blog. "He is president at…
For years, financial leaders, advised by highly paid experts, have bought and borrowed to acquire a portfolio of world-class assets, the intrinsic value of which has never been in question. A few bears jeered, but were quickly priced out of the market. Those days--so recent--are no more. Asset…
Lincoln or Reagan? TR or Ike? Washington or Wilson? Camelot or Campobello? Offshore oil drilling may be stalled for the duration, but nothing can stop the round-the-clock mining of clichés and the deep-earth probes in search of historical metaphors for President Obama. Journalists are running three…
We may sooner than you think look back at 2008 and need to be reminded that this was the year when the stock market crashed, the banks reeled, the streets of Athens ran with blood, Obama captured the White House and invited the Clintons back in, the GOP collapsed, and Chris Buckley and David Frum…
Pour yourself a Johnnie Walker Black and remember. The presidential campaign was going to be about sex--the sex of the inevitable winning candidate. Then it was going to be about race. We dreamed we would atone for slavery and the Berlin Airlift, impress Europe and charm the Arab world. But the…
I have always wanted to go to Crete. And in two weeks, I shall carry my wife there--much as Zeus did the fair princess Europa. But as the day approaches, I find that I am longing not so much for the island ringed with the wine-dark sea, but simply to be outta here. I don't think about the wild…
I am among those who have never fancied Barack Obama as presidential material. But I share with almost everyone the feeling that the nicest things about the Obamas are their daughters--adorable, charming, happy, and well-brought up. So I was delighted to see the Obama family attacked by a liberal…