People go on quite a bit about self-determination these days. Some decry the denial of self-determination to "the Palestinians." Others insist that only "the Jewish people" can have the right to self-determination between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea....
From the start, political Zionists identified their program with Judaism the religion (despite their secularism, even atheism). Also from the start, Jews -- including the most tradition-bound Jews -- vigorously disavowed that identification. They were shamed as...
The fighting at Lexington and Concord didn’t happen because the British army came to collect taxes. It was gun control. Of course, the government-run schools don’t teach this. What finally forced the patriots into a shooting war with the British Army at Lexington and...
The Western commentariat has spilled much ink and expended considerable effort attempting to explain our era of political malaise, particularly the disruptions underway within the Republican Party and the American Right. It is into that maelstrom that Jacob Heilbrunn...
There is a booming op-ed industry that peddles tortured World War II analogies. The latest offering from its tired assembly line was published by Politico and penned by unreconstructed neoconservative Charlie Sykes. As with other offerings in recent years (and indeed,...
The past few weeks have seen a predictable reaction to the release of (yet another) survey of “experts” regarding the proper ranking of United States presidents. Apart from the inherent problems any such attempted ranking poses, problems my colleague Hunter DeRensis...
The Iron Dice of Battle: Albert Sidney Johnston and the Civil War in the West by Timothy B. Smith (LSU Press: 2023), 248 pages "You were still reading that book when I walked by three hours ago. It must be a good one." Sitting outside the cafe, I looked up to see a...
We're led to believe that today's political struggles are largely a contest between populists and elitists. But something besides libertarians is missing from that simple tale: the elitists in populist clothing, or elitist populists. We have no better example than a...
