Category Politics/Culture

A thought experiment: You have two people seated in front of you of whom you must ask to provide you with information that may cast them in a slightly negative light, but whose truthful answer will very likely save your life. If they lie or distort the information they have in order to protect their reputation, you will probably die. They won’t, but they will have to live with the moral consequences of their decision for the rest of their lives.

These two people are Donald Trump and his former vice-president, Mike Pence. And they give you completely different information on the subject at hand.

So, the question: Which person would you be inclined to believe?

Followed by: How many seconds/minutes would it take you to arrive at that decision?

What are the factors that would drive your evaluation?

Why aren’t we paying more attention to this remarkable, utterly flabbergasting story, one so Shakespearean in its...

It comes down to this: Joe Biden—his feelings, his hopes, his accomplishments, his legacy—is not bigger than his country. And right now, that country he wants to lead again through the next four years is in mortal danger from the menace that is Donald Trump.

That makes it imperative, a moral duty, that Biden thinks only of his country, and not himself, in making way for someone younger and more nimble to prosecute the case against Trump. That was the only task Biden had two nights ago, and he failed miserably.

That stiff, slack-jawed and mentally meandering 81-year-old man who stood haplessly on stage, unable to respond in any meaningful way to the usual fire hose of lies spewing from the mouth of his opponent, will not be improving with age.

Yes, he had a cold, he’s a lifelong stutterer, and his staff should be prosecuted on grounds of political malfeasance for obviously stuffing his head with statist...

Friday morning, feeling my way down under the outward, cork-popping joy of the previous evening’s news regarding Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 counts of felonious conduct, I found something more basic: a sense of simple yet profoundly felt relief. Something akin to the completion of a long project that had presented multiple obstacles and taxed my patience and commitment and faith that I would ever see it come to fruition.

Finally!

All his life, Trump had sneered at decency, laughed off honesty as fit only for suckers, marshaled his millions of inheritance dollars to hire an army of lawyers and henchmen who helped him stay one step ahead of law enforcement, the IRS, the creditors he had stiffed, the women he had abused, the students at his fake university, the contributors to his fake charities, his failed ventures in steaks and airlines and casinos and apartments, and perhaps most grievously of all, his...

Nikki Haley is the latest, but it’s a tight contest as to who is the most craven and cynical of countless Republican Party officeholders who have forsaken all principle and moral authority in embracing a failed insurrectionist and would-be despot who has lied, evaded, bluffed and bullied his way into position to perhaps retake the presidency come November.

Haley’s recent capitulation and endorsement of Donald Trump, whom she correctly and righteously eviscerated as unfit for office over many months on the campaign trail, is particularly glaring on this Memorial Day weekend, when courage and self-sacrifice are held up as the ideals upon which every free society depends.

She joins a long list of her party’s officials who have sounded the alarm over years now about the unique threat Trump poses to our democratic institutions (see below), only to reverse course when they fear his wrath, or their dimming job p...

William F. Buckley was always one of those conservatives it was good for liberals to keep abreast of. Liberal arguments for an expansive government role in American life had to go through Buckley’s mixture of cultured intellectual gravitas, take-no-prisoners debate skills and slightly mischievous humor, all of which made for a formidable presence across the American cultural landscape in the second half of the 20th century.

Buckley died in 2008 at age 82, less than a year after Pat, his socialite wife of 56 years, passed on and left him desolate. He died, however, in the wake of a life that had shaped the history of his era in ways that reverberate to this day. That impact is ably and entertainingly chronicled in a currently streaming (through May 3) PBS documentary entitled, “The Incomparable Mr. Buckley.”

Last fall, I finally caught up via YouTube to the famous 1965 debate between Buckley and the equally...