Columnist.
Looking back through the years I have seen it all coming: the militant ignorance of students strutting across our college campuses today, the authoritarian style of the administrators, the mediocrity of the professors and the sheer goofiness of the students. It all came out of the late 1960s. Most of my fellow 1960s graduates went on to careers in the professions, commerce and industry. But some remained on campus, becoming professors, administrators and increasingly, as the years went on, swamis of identity politics. They established women's studies programs, black studies programs and gay studies programs. Now, I assume, there are studies programs for people with eating disorders, transgender people who transgendered once again and people who only eat dirt.
I was reading a brilliant biography of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by Charles Moore titled "Margaret Thatcher At Her Zenith: In London, Washington, and Moscow" just about the time our president was delivering his rhetorical serving of mush at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, Japan. There he was, calling for a "moral revolution" worldwide, which would rid the world of nuclear arms. He said: "We may not be able to eliminate mankind's capacity to do evil...But among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them." Incidentally, what will President Obama or his successor do with a nuclear-armed Iran, a nuclear-armed Iran that he so recently enabled?
One thing conservatives overlook in their worldview is tradition. We favor limited government, free enterprise, certain social issues and a strong defense. But we slide over the basic theme of tradition. Russell Kirk, an important conservative thinker, favored tradition, and he wrote about it. But I cannot think of another prominent thinker of recent years who stressed it.
A couple of weeks ago I heard the National Symphony Orchestra perform Dmitri Shostakovich's symphony commemorating war and revolution, his Symphony No. 11. There was not much lyricism to it, not even a dulcet tune one could whistle while leaving the symphony hall. It was ominous rumbling and groaning, the tympani madly thundering away. Nonetheless, it was very affecting. After all, the 1957 work commemorated Russia's events on the road to the Bolshevik Revolution. Rumble on. Rumble on.
Last week, the pressing news story was the conservative crackup, which pleased me, considering I wrote the book titled "The Conservative Crack-Up" many moons ago. Although, there were a lot more facts in my book than you will find in all the news reports that appeared last week. Moreover, the ending to my crackup story was a lot a happier for conservatives than the crackup ending predicted last week for contemporary conservatives. In brief, the wisenheimers of the media were predicting that Donald Trump, having snagged the Republican nomination, would come to Washington, D.C. in a matter of days to burn down the Republican National Committee headquarters and take Republican leaders prisoner, most significantly House Speaker Paul Ryan.
If I were to confess my prejudice of Greek barbers, what would be said of me? Well, it would depend on where I said it. If I were in Athens and said that I prefer Greek barbers, my preference would be perfectly understandable. I might even become an instant celebrity. Times have been tough in Athens. If I were in Rome and expressed my preference for Greek barbers, I would be dismissed as an ignoramus and offered an Italian barber. If I were in Paris, well, most Parisians my age don't have much hair left, and therefore have little need for a barber. Many wear toupees, although I am told the cue-ball look is gaining acceptance.
President Barack Obama participated in a press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron last Friday, during which he helped me decide whether or not the British should stay in the European Union. The vote is on June 23. That same day, our president penned a column in The Telegraph, a British publication similar to The Wall Street Journal. On both platforms, Obama argued that Britain should remain in the EU. Until Obama marshaled his case, I was uncertain as to what our British allies should do. Now I know. After reading his column and listening to his speech, the answer became clear: Britain should opt out of the EU. Once again, Obama's reasoning made the obvious choice clear. Once again, he was arrogantly wrong.
It comes down to this: Crazy Sen. Bernie Sanders is running for the Democratic nomination against Hillary Clinton because no other Democrat would stick his/her/its neck out. Clinton has been dubbed "Hillary the Inevitable" by some, and the gullible Democrats believe it. Of course, Crazy Bernie is not really a Democrat; he is a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist. There was a day when a Democratic Socialist was too outré for the Democratic Party. Back then, a Democratic Socialist would have had to run on a third-party ticket, or perhaps even a fourth-party ticket. Now, of course, the Democratic Party has moved so far to the left that Bernie can claim he speaks for the party's base.
Over the last few days, former President Bill Clinton displayed one of the salient weaknesses of our contemporary politicians. He did this even while reminding Americans of, some would say, his rare lapses in true leadership: his 1994 bipartisan legislation to lower crimes rates in cities. When confronted by low-information Black Lives Matter activists during his speech in Philadelphia last week, he wilted. It took him 24 hours, but eventually, after an eloquent defense of his 1994 leadership, he groveled, whimpering, "I almost want to apologize."
At 9:30 p.m. the other night, I was presented with a tragic lesson regarding one of our country's pig-headed policy errors, devised ever so quietly by President Barack Obama in league with progressives all over the country. Most Americans are unaware of this policy — they never voted for it; they never debated it. The progressives are just imposing it on us through stealth. This is the Democrats' latest advance in democratic process.
The House Speaker, the honorable Paul Ryan, recently expressed his hope for a more "confident America." He went on to say "we don't shut people down. If someone has a bad idea, we tell them why our idea is better. We don't insult them into agreeing with us." He spoke of the superiority of persuasion to execration. Close observers of the Ryan metier thought he was addressing Donald Trump. After listening to the campaigns in both parties, I have a different view. In my mind, Ryan was urging caution on everyone campaigning for the presidency this year. Certainly, his remarks were aimed at his fellow Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich. Yet they were also aimed at Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, who both disparage Trump, Cruz and Kasich — and forget not the infamous one percent — whenever they take the lectern.
People on the left think highly of themselves when they exalt the lowly poor, when they cry out for world peace and when they speak about a race. As these Americans on the left prattle on about their alleged noble ends (as opposed to the means to those ends), some conservative Americans have grown downright envious. They think to themselves, why can't we, too, think well of ourselves when we talk about poverty, international relations and race? The answer is that conservatives generally talk about specific policies that lead to jobs for the poor (a modus vivendi for hostile nations) and the rule of law for all Americans. Still, such talk leaves these conservatives covetous of America's sanctimonious left.
I have been an attentive observer of political protests for many moons. You might say I was present at their creation. For me, that would be back in 1968 at Chicago, Illinois's Grant Park. My brother and I stood between a line of young Chicago policemen as they grew increasingly anxious, their backs to the hotels that faced the park. In the park, luminaries of Democratic politics — Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey — were putting the final touches on their convention performances. What provoked the young cops (those mainly of Irish and Italian descent) was a mob of college-age demonstrators, members of the vaunted youth movement of 1968 who were proponents of the new politics movement. They were about to get what any sane observer would have anticipated. But the Tyrrell boys were reliably sane and faded from the scene.
As the race for the presidential nomination enters the pandemonium stage, I take solace in the soothing wisdom of my friend the British historian, Paul Johnson. He writes: "America is a big country, with vast regions and endless opportunities for polycentrism." Another way of putting it is that America is a federalist system with endless opportunities for variation. It is always a mistake to focus too intensely on Washington or New York. What about Indianapolis, or Wichita, or Raleigh, North Carolina? Today the campaign for the Democratic nomination is entering an eerie stage. The campaign for the Republican nomination is entering a terminal stage. Yet out there in America things are taking place that should be reassuring.
I wrote a book in 2011 with the felicitous title "The Death of Liberalism." The book's title pretty much said it all. By 2011, the ideology of Adlai Stevenson, of Hubert Humphrey, of Daniel Patrick Moynihan had expired. In the book I explained why liberalism was dead. Today the evidence is even more abundant. A socialist and a liberal naysayer as the sole candidates for the Democratic nomination? Liberalism is history. President Bill Clinton in his 1996 State of the Union address was succinct: "The era of big government is over." President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s made it so. Newt Gingrich in the 1990s was seeing to it that the liberal corpse could not be resurrected, and not much that Clinton did in his presidency resuscitated liberalism. By 2011 I thought it was time for an autopsy.
I am certainly glad that The Washington Post reported on a controversy at Georgetown University last week, which was created by the sad death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Thanks to that informative report, I am canceling my million-dollar bequest to old Georgetown and channeling it elsewhere, probably to Donald Trump's super PAC, if I can find his super PAC. The controversy arose because of a dean's perfectly civilized published statement of grief. A press release from the Georgetown Law School announced, "Georgetown Law Mourns the Loss of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia," a Georgetown undergraduate and summa cum laude graduate.
Recall if you will those unforgettable royal figures from yesteryear with their peculiar cognomens. Some of my favorites are Ethelred the Unready, a famously tardy English king from the Middle Ages. Or how about Charles the Bald, the Holy Roman Emperor whose glabrous head was widely remarked in his time and still is to this very day? And who can forget Pepin the Short? Even standing on his tiptoes he was the diminutive King of the Franks.
Well, well, the stock market has, of a sudden, caught up with the Obama economy. The spectacle is not pretty. In January, the market dropped like a stone. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 8.1 percent. Friday, the Nasdaq shed 3.25 percent points upon hearing the news that payroll additions grew by only 151,000 jobs. That was well behind the monthly average of 2015, another year of Obama recovery. That is to say, it was another year of meager growth. In the last quarter of 2015, the economy grew at less than 1 percent. If this is a recovery, it is coming very close to looking like a prolonged recession.
In the many decades I have had the pleasure of covering the Clintons, I have developed several themes about them that have, over the years, been validated by fact. One theme is that there is a Clinton curse. It afflicts many who come into contact with the fabulous couple. In the early days, the curse brought down the McDougals, Webb Hubbell, Vince Foster and former Governor Jim Guy Tucker, all of whom by now are figures known only to history. More recently it was Jeffrey Epstein, sex offender and Bill Clinton's pal and fellow epicure. Now, quite possibly, Josh Earnest, press secretary to President Barack Obama, will be added to the list along with Hillary Clinton's aides: Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Bryan Pagliano and Jake Sullivan. Perhaps even David Brock will suffer the Clinton curse. The Clintons are a couple to be avoided. Even the Democratic Party might not be spared come Election Day 2016.
In reading Paul Johnson's masterful "Art: A New History," I came across a startling number of art masters who did bodies sublimely, hands and even landscapes brilliantly, but who could not plausibly paint a human face. Some of the artists recognized this and had their subjects look over their shoulder or off to the horizon, or were painted behind a floppy hat. Nonetheless the artists are esteemed as great, though limited.
