Published in The American Conservative Throughout the Cold War, conservatives had a certain advantage in the competition of ideas—the battle between the West’s right to pursue happiness and the East’s pursuit of the right to happiness. The USSR—not to mention its despotic affiliates across the globe—was more than a temporal nightmare; it was the actualization of…
How to Revive Jewish Support for Israel [FEDERALIST] Current pro-Israel efforts among Jewish millennials will fail because they're targeting the symptom rather than the syndrome.
Published on The Federalist “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” That longstanding public relations mantra has become only more germane in the epoch of the digital sound byte. At this year’s AIPAC Policy Conference held last month in Washington DC and attended by 18,000 activists, there was a lot of explaining on a key front. In addition…
Flint and the Myth of Environmental Racism [WEEKLY STANDARD] It was inattentive bureaucracy, not some pervasive and malignant power, that was to blame for bad water.
Published in The Weekly Standard In 1989, a small videogame company called Maxis released SimCity, a city-building simulation, inaugurating what would become one of the best-selling computer game series of all time. SimCity’s aim was straightforward: As “mayor,” the player was challenged with designing and managing a metropolis. In addition to this open-ended mode, there were…
Is Trump Strauss’ed Out? [DAILY CALLER] Is The Donald the embodiment of the political philosopher's precept of "close reading"?
Published on The Daily Caller A primer: Leo Strauss was a German-born political philosopher who died in 1973 and caused the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Sound strange? Well, a number of academics – and other unserious individuals – have managed to build entire careers on that very conjecture. Of course, given the type of…
Review: “Jack Kemp,” by Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes [AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE] How conservative was the "bleeding-heart conservative"?
Published in The American Conservative When prominent conservatives pass away, they often receive polite, if not laudatory, obituaries from publications like the New York Times and the New Republic. This has led those on the right to sarcastically quip that, for those on the left, the only good conservative is a dead conservative. But these days, a…
Patriotic Americans Need Not Apply to Fight ISIS [FEDERALIST] At least, that’s the message the government’s recruiting website sends would-be ISIS fighters—and everyone else.
Published on The Federalist Check out the following two recruitment pitches on YouTube. (I challenge you to watch all of the second one.) This video is from the Islamic State, while this video is from USAjobs.gov, the federal government’s employment website. (It’s not encouraging that the latter, released more than a year ago, has just over…
Jewish Opposition to Guns is Suicidal [DAILY CALLER] American Jewry’s hostility toward guns is irrational and hypocritical.
Published on The Daily Caller Are Jews obligated to do something special when they visit Berlin? I was recently there for a friend’s wedding. Even though it wasn’t my first time in the German capital, I made it a point to again pop into the Neue Synagoge and stroll around the Memorial to the Murdered…
The Real Irving Kristol [NATIONAL INTEREST] Contrary to popular belief, the godfather of neoconservatism was a consistent adherent of realpolitik in international affairs.
Published in The National Interest In 1990, the publisher of The National Interest wrote an essay to mark the fifth anniversary of the magazine. It was called “Defining Our National Interest.” In it, he asked, “But what about the moral dimension of American foreign policy? It has always been there and, since we are an…
Love Thy Out-of-State Student [NRO] It's anti-conservative — and anti-prosperity — to insist that public colleges and universities reserve spots for in-state applicants.
Published on National Review Online ‘Tis the season. Millions of starry-eyed teenagers from all over the country are beginning the four-year (hopefully), alcohol-and-ramen-infused odyssey of grasping that the American diploma ain’t that remarkable. On that uplifting note, let’s chat for a couple of minutes about the Ivory Tower. So I enjoy dropping into local Democratic…
How Liberalism Is Destroying Jewish-American Zionism [NRO] An obsession with social justice, tolerance, and inclusivity has come to roost.
Published on National Review Online A few years ago, someone told me that non-Jewish passengers were starting to outnumber Jewish passengers on El Al flights from New York City to Tel Aviv. It was probably just a rumor. (I doubt that any airline, even El Al, would compile — let alone publicize — this sort of…