Reading an online response by someone described as “National Review’s chief domestic policy analyst,� with the mellifluous, politically correct name of “Reihan Salam,� addressed to Ron Unz of the American Conservative, I was struck by a stray reference to a group that Salam’s employers have not accorded the right of recognition. Salam observes that Unz,... Read More

Recently I’ve been thinking about someone whose name is attached to an organization I’m currently president of, H.L. Mencken (1880-1956). For years I’ve tried to understand why the Baltimore Sage has been branded, mostly recently in The Weekly Standard (see here and here) and in a voluminous biography by Terry Teachout, as anti-Semitic and anti-Black.... Read More

My young friend Richard Spencer has observed that whenever neocon employees take “conservative� positions on social issues, they find irreproachably leftwing reasons to do so. Thus when they object to abortion, it is because its advocates and practitioners refuse to extend the egalitarian principle far enough—to the unborn. Or when minicons grumble feebly about quotas... Read More

Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor are both to be commended for setting us straight about the non-relation between Arizona killer Jared Loughner and American Renaissance. Despite a damning report from Homeland Security linking Loughner to this publication, no evidence showing such a connection could be produced. Moreover the description of the AR “organization,� (it is... Read More

Jim Kalb’s critique of competing views of modernity is rather thorough, and like him, I find much to criticize in what is dissected. Most of the alternatives posed to the present liberal tyranny, Jim points out, are flawed or unworkable. Glorifying the wills of some superior individuals or an ideal community based on biological similarity... Read More

I fully agree with Richard’s assessment of Richard Nixon’s legacy. And as someone who actually knew the former president, my opinion may count for something in this discussion. Despite his uniformly leftist conduct of domestic affairs, Nixon, as Richard notes, showed a refreshing realism in foreign policy. The attacks on him from neoconservative quarters had... Read More

Keith Preston is correct that one could easily look to monarchists and authoritarian conservatives for critiques of “liberal democracy.� But for better or worse, such critics were not libertarians, and to the extent that Schmitt was unhappy with liberal democracy, it was because this hybrid regime resembled the political worldview of someone like Ludwig von... Read More

Having looked at the “essential reading matter� for the (real) American Right posted on this website (here, here, and here), it seems to me that all the lists have at least some value. The recommenders are to be praised for recognizing the utter irrelevance of what the neoconservative-controlled press raises to canonical status, in accordance... Read More

The responses on this website to my remarks from last month’s Mencken Club meeting impel me to offer this clarification. For those respondents who criticize me for not addressing biodiversity, I should point out the obvious. Unlike a scholar like Henry Harpending, who was one of our speakers, I am not a biologist. It would... Read More

The death of Joe Sobran on September 30, after several years of failing health, could not have come as a total surprise to any of his friends. News about his deteriorating condition and the need for divine intervention was steadily provided by Fran Griffin, his alter ego of many years, his longtime publisher, and, not... Read More

Let me begin by registering my agreement with Professor Charlton. It does not surprise me to learn that this gentleman teaches medicine, not social work, English composition or “women’s studies.� I expect serious thinking from someone who trains physicians — as opposed to embattled feminists or Black Power advocates. In my years in the academic... Read More

A young libertarian friend of mine Thomas Woods is, no doubt, making a fortune on his latest book, Nullification: How to Resist Tyranny in the 21st Century, recently published by the Republican-affiliated Regnery Press. Those who are promoting this work are for the most part GOP publicists and FOX-news celebrities. The relevant historical part can... Read More

Although Richard Hoste seems to be the polar opposite of Larry Auster, both of them are equally driven by Jewish fixations. Auster considers anyone who fails to meet his fastidious standards of Jewish nationalism and anti-anti-Semitism to be a closet Nazi. Hoste by contrast can’t rein in his hatred for Israel and for anyone who... Read More

A question I’ve been thinking about for some time is as follows: Where on the American political spectrum would it be proper to place strong supporters of Israel, including American partisans of Israel’s present nationalist government? What complicate this question are the support patterns for the Israelis and the Palestinians. They cut across conventional ideological... Read More

Richard Hoste seems to differ from my view that the Right (used, of course, in a very broad sense) could in no way benefit from misrepresenting MLK as a small-government conservative. Richard believes that if we continue to tell blacks the noble lie, which the neoconservatives and Glenn Beck have worked so hard to spread,... Read More

As I was turning on TV earlier in the week (my wife keeps the set permanently on FOX), I heard Glenn Beck complaining about the Black Panthers. Viewers were then shown a picture of a presumed Klansman in a truck carrying a noose. Supposedly this is what the Black Panthers were planning to do, by... Read More

In a commentary for Chronicles (unavailable online), Tom Fleming makes an argument about the increasing irrelevance of the Constitution that I find mostly irrefutable. According to his argument, which is clearly non-neocon in origin, it is futile to try to depend on a tradition of government that arose in radically different circumstances from our own.... Read More

Listening to Elena Kagan as she was speaking before the Senate Judicial Committee, I was struck by how perfectly she fits her time and place. An overweight Jewish lesbian, whose career seems to have been put on fast track by her political supporters both inside and outside the media and someone who if she held... Read More

Having read Jim Kalb on hipster liberalism, I find there is much in his essay I agree with and even more that I disagree with. His description of the self-absorbed individual who yaps constantly about equality but has no moral center applies to most academics of my acquaintance. This description also pertains to the college-age... Read More